Overview

Women face unique and, compared with men, frequently greater challenges in accessing affordable health insurance. Even though they are more likely to need health care, women are more likely than men to encounter barriers to receiving it. Women, who more often than men are caring for a child or aging relative, are thus less likely to have good access to health care themselves. Patterns of insurance coverage are also different for women. Slightly fewer women are uninsured, mostly because their higher poverty rate and greater eligibility for public insurance have meant that women are covered by Medicaid at twice the rate of men. However, should current trends continue, the number of uninsured women will surpass the number of uninsured men by 2005. Uninsured women are older, more likely to be married, and more likely to work part-time than men. In addition, women are less likely to have direct access to employer-based health insurance and slightly more likely to purchase individual insurance. These findings together suggest that combining proposals to make existing private and public insurance options more affordable for women may be the best short-term strategy for meeting their health care needs. This study explores the difficulties women encounter in obtaining health insurance. It then evaluates some major approaches to expanding health coverage for their potential to address these challenges.