US Failing on Women's Health Issues
Excerpt By Todd Zwillich, Reuters Health

WASHINGTON (Reuters Health) - The United States gets a grade of ``unsatisfactory'' when it comes to dealing with women's health issues, according to a national report card released Tuesday by the National Women's Law Center.

The report concludes that just a handful of states have made moves to tackle diseases affecting women, including heart disease and cervical cancer. It also concludes that states and the federal government have done either too little or nothing at all to expand women's access to health insurance and medical services.

``Neither the nation nor the states have met the challenge of helping women secure better access to key healthcare services and increasing the availability of needed healthcare providers,'' the report states.

The group released a similar report last year, benchmarking more than 30 healthcare issues and 30 policy issues at the national and state level. Since then just four states made improvements in women's access to health coverage, while five states and the District of Columbia improved Medicaid benefits for pregnant women, the report shows.

Many states improved health screenings for women's cancers, according to the report. Coverage for mammograms remains widespread in all 50 states and six improved their coverage of family planning services.

Still, few states have made progress in women's diabetes rates or in promoting programs to cut obesity, smoking or high blood pressure in women, the report shows.

``There are harmful gaps in policy and important areas where our nation is failing to take steps that would significantly improve women's health,'' said Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center.

Hawaii, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont topped the list by meeting 10 or more of the report card's health and policy benchmarks. Southern states, including Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina and West Virginia, occupied the bottom eight slots on the report card.

Meanwhile, a men's health group complained that the report is ``asking the wrong question.'' Men still have an average life expectancy that is 5.7 years shorter than women's, and see physicians only one-third as often as women do, according to a statement issued by Men's Health America, a nonprofit group that lobbies for men's health funding.

``We need to protect the gains in women's health,'' said Neil Steyskal, the group's public health advisor. ``At the same time, it is only fair that we begin to address the woeful disparities that affect the health of men.''

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