Health Care Reform
Health Care Reform
Every US resident should have access to affordable, quality health care, including birth control and the privacy to make reproductive choices.
Why It Matters
The US health care system should provide a basic level of quality health care at an affordable cost to all US residents. Basic care includes disease prevention, primary care (including prenatal and reproductive health), acute long-term care, mental health care, as well as health promotion and education. Health care policy goals should include the equitable distribution of services and delivery of care, advancement of medical research and technology, and a reasonable total national expenditure level.
What We're Doing
Over the past 20 years, we have lobbied for health care policy solutions, including the Affordable Care Act (ACA), to control costs and ensure a basic level of care for all. Throughout the health care debates of the past few decades, Leagues worked to provide millions of Americans across the country with objective information about the health care system and its significant reforms. This included organizing community education projects, holding public forums and debates, creating and distributing resource materials, and engaging leading policymakers and analysts.
LWV is mobilizing partners with Planned Parenthood Action Fund in the Bans Off Our Bodies campaign for reproductive justice. We're proud to partner with leaders in the abortion rights space to promote everyone's right to bodily autonomy.
The restoration of reproductive rights is a central tenant in our Women's Inequality Day campaign.
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The League signed onto a letter to the President urging him to ensure that the Weldon Amendment is not included in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 budget. The Weldon Amendment is an appropriations rider that threatens the loss of federal funding for federal agencies and programs or state and local governments that require health insurance plans, health care institutions, or health care professionals to cover, provide, or refer for abortions.
The League of Women Voters of the United States joined public comments to the Department of Defense (DoD) urging them to progress with, and publish the findings from, data collection on service members' experience with family planning services (e.g. abortion, contraception, and infertility assistance) provided by the DoD and community providers. This is to help identify areas where the DoD needs to develop care, programs, services, or policies after the Supreme Court's ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022).
The League of Women Voters of the United States submitted comments to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in response to its solicitation of comments on Healthy People 2030 Objectives. The League recommends next steps that the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP) can take to further progress toward the new core objective of increasing the proportion of the voting-age citizens who vote.
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