This post is part of a series on Women and Health Reform.

African American women aren’t any more likely to get a cancer diagnosis than white women (in fact, incidence rates for some cancer types—like breast cancer—are considerably lower among African Americans) but they are more likely to die from it. According to a new report from the American Cancer Society, the cancer death rate for African American women is 16 percent higher than the rate for their white peers. This racial disparity reflects poorer survival due to later stage at diagnosis and less access to appropriate and timely treatment, with the authors concluding that this type of health inequity is the result of “social and economic disparities more than biological differences associated with race.”

The disparity in death rates among the two groups is even greater when you examine rates for specific cancers. Compared to white women, African American women are more than twice as likely to die from cancers of the stomach and cervix. They’re nearly 40 percent more likely to die from breast cancer—the most common cancer diagnosis for women of both races. These statistics might be a little less distressing if the disparity gaps were shrinking over time, but they are not. Over the past three decades, the gap in overall cancer death rates between African American and white women has barely budged; for colorectal and breast cancers it has actually grown.

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From Richard Kirsch, our National Campaign Director:

"We are quite confident that Senator Kennedy's goal is to bring traditional opponents of reform around to the view that measures that provide quality, affordable coverage for all are necessary. Many of the elements reported in the New York Times story, such as making sure that coverage is meaningful and affordable and has national standards for benefits and insurance regulation, are essential to reform. When it comes to the question of requiring individuals to purchase coverage, the key here is that it be good coverage that is truly affordable. To do that we will have to have shared responsibility for payment between individuals, employers, and government. The business lobby cannot take the position that we need to keep an employer-based system but that businesses don't have to contribute to that system, pushing all the costs on families and taxpayers. Another key reform, which is an essential part of President Obama's plan, is assuring that people have a choice of a private or public health insurance plan. This reform – which as a Commonwealth Fund Commission report released just yesterday reinforces – is the best way to control costs and assure that coverage is truly affordable."

NEWS

Costs for individual health plans soar - USA Today

At a time when more people are forced to buy their own health insurance because of job losses, costs for many individual policies are soaring.

U.S. employers expect steady rise in health costs - Reuters

U.S. employers expect increases in health care costs will stay at a steady 6 percent this year, twice the rate of inflation, according to a survey published on Thursday.

Health Care Industry in Talks to Shape Policy - New York Times

Since last fall, many of the leading figures in the nation’s long-running health care debate have been meeting secretly in a Senate hearing room. Now, with the blessing of the Senate’s leading proponent of universal health insurance, Edward M. Kennedy, they appear to be inching toward a consensus that could reshape the debate.

Dentists: Smiling in the Face of Recession - Time

The one guy is 63-years old, just lost his job at a health insurer, and is afraid he'll never find another one again. The other has three kids, one in college, and lost his construction job. The stress caused them to both grind their canines and molars. So they both wound up in the office of Dr. Woody Oakes, a dentist from New Albany, Indiana, with a fractured tooth. "You do see that — someone lost their job, and they come in with their jaws clenched," says Oakes, who is also the editor of The Profitable Dentist magazine. "You can fracture your teeth when you do that."

As much as conservatives hype the importance of competition in the health insurance market, competition is largely a myth today and will remain a myth so long as private insurers have exclusive control of the health care market for individuals and working families. Giving people a choice of public health insurance would bring much needed competition to a health care system dominated by insurance companies with oligopoly power and large provider conglomerates.

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To underscore yesterday's arguments about the need for affordable health insurance for young people, there's this report that came out today:

Young adults today aren't any healthier than 10 to 15 years ago, and in some cases — obesity, for one — they are significantly less so, says a federal report on the nation's health released Wednesday.

The annual report, from the National Center for Health Statistics, is based on the most recent data available from a variety of health sources. It covers health issues across ages and includes for the first time a section on 50 million young adults ages 18-29, a group that is "understudied," says lead author Amy Bernstein.

Oh, and 30% of them don't have health insurance.

As noted yesterday, this isn't because young people think they're invincible, it's because they can't afford health care. That needs to change.

NEWS

New U.S. health insurance program envisioned - Reuters

A prominent private U.S. health policy group on Thursday proposed creating a major new public health program and government-operated insurance exchange as part of a plan to expand coverage and rein in health care costs.

Kansas Governor Seen as Top Choice in Health Post - New York Times

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, an early Obama ally with a record of working across party lines, is emerging as the president’s top choice for secretary of health and human services, advisers said Wednesday.

Young adults' health is static or even declining - USA Today

Young adults today aren't any healthier than 10 to 15 years ago, and in some cases — obesity, for one — they are significantly less so, says a federal report on the nation's health released Wednesday.

Why Your Health Care Is in Jeopardy - ABC News

If 24 months ago, someone had predicted a catastrophic real estate price collapse, auto company bankruptcy, stock market decline, bank failures and rising unemployment, that person would have been called alarmist. At risk of being called histrionic, we are predicting that health care in the United States is in danger of collapsing within 24 months.

Shorter Betsy McCaughey: "It wasn't pay-for-play, I just regularly take money from pharmaceutical companies and medical device makers."

Today, Cara Buckley at the New York Times has an excellent look at young people and health insurance. An excerpt:

They borrow leftover prescription drugs from friends, attempt to self-diagnose ailments online, stretch their diabetes and asthma medicines for as long as possible and set their own broken bones. When emergencies strike, they rarely can afford the bills that follow.

“My first reaction was to start laughing — I just kept saying, ‘No way, no way,’ ” Alanna Boyd, a 28-year-old receptionist, recalled of the $17,398 — including $13 for the use of a television — that she was charged after spending 46 hours in October at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan with diverticulitis, a digestive illness. “I could have gone to a major university for a year. Instead, I went to the hospital for two days.”

In the parlance of the health care industry, Ms. Boyd, whose case remains unresolved, is among the “young invincibles” — people in their 20s who shun insurance either because their age makes them feel invulnerable or because expensive policies are out of reach. Young adults are the nation’s largest group of uninsured — there were 13.2 million of them nationally in 2007, or 29 percent, according to the latest figures from the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit research group in New York.

Mike Connery over at Future Majority makes a great point:

Here's the thing, though, the term implies an arrogance - a willful choice to forgo health care because one is young and statistically unlikely to require anything more than a few antibiotics once in a while. But most every person described in these types of articles - and certainly every person I know within that age demographic - who lacks health insurance does so not out of choice, or a sense of invincibility, but because their job fails to provide it for them and the cost of purchasing an individual plan is too high.

A common argument against public health insurance, especially insurance that is mandated, is that young people, thinking themselves invincible, will opt not to buy health insurance. Thus, only the sick and old buy into public health insurance plans, making them unnaffordably expensive because risk is not shared. I agree with Mike: I simply don't think that's the case.

If health insurance were truly affordable and guaranteed a standard level of benefits, a great many young people would purchase it even if there weren't an individual mandate. But they don't even have that choice, and, as the Times points out, that's a real problem.

For people stricken with cancer, having health insurance is no guarantee they will be able to afford the care they need. That sobering fact is illustrated in a new report with the stories of real people suffering needlessly in their time of crisis. As if fighting the disease were not difficult enough, cancer patients too often have to fight our dysfunctional health care system as well. Any of us could face such hardship at any time. That is why we must all take on the lobbyists and the special interests fighting health reform.

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In 2003 a much-needed benefit was added to Medicare: prescription drug coverage. Titled “Part D,” the benefit became a lesson in what happens when ideology trumps facts and reason. It is the only Medicare benefit that is not available directly from Medicare. To get Medicare drug coverage people with Medicare have to join a private Medicare drug or health plan. The result? Taxpayers and Medicare members have paid tens of millions of dollars more for drugs each year than they would have if there were no private insurance middlemen. A new bill introduced in both the House and the Senate would finally correct this boondoggle.

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