Why It Matters
The US health care system should provide all US residents with a basic level of quality health care at an affordable cost. Basic care includes disease prevention, primary care (including prenatal and reproductive health), acute and long-term care, mental health care, and 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.
The League of Women Voters believes that public policy must affirm the right of privacy of the individual to make reproductive choices and that every individual should have access to quality health care at an affordable cost.
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 basic 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 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.
On July 4th, the President signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), a nearly 1,000-page bill that changes federal spending levels by stripping tens of millions of our most vulnerable neighbors of their health care and nutrition.
The OBBB slashes vital programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) to pay for tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans. This blog looks at just some of the new law’s provisions.
The right to contraception is currently protected in the United States by a combination of federal court cases and state legislation. Tens of millions of women and other people of reproductive age rely on contraception to make decisions about their bodies and lives.
However, in recent years, government attacks on reproductive freedom have made it clear how our fundamental rights can be eroded and taken away, making additional state and federal protections for contraception imperative.
The United States Congress is using a fast-track budget process known as budget reconciliation to pass legislation that will take away health care and food access from millions of people to pay for tax cuts for corporations and wealthy Americans.
That gives us just weeks left in the process to demand that our members of Congress represent everyday Americans and oppose cuts to Medicaid.
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