Halle Berry wants to talk to Gavin Newsom about menopause

SACRAMENTO, California — Legislatively speaking, menopause is having a moment.

In recent years, the biological transition that is a given for half the population has gone from a topic of hushed conversations to the subject of bipartisan bills pushed by celebrity-backed lobbying campaigns.

One of the latest legislative battle lines is in California, where A-list supporters of women’s health care are running into entrenched political fights around insurance rules.

On Wednesday, Respin Health, a company started by actress Halle Berry that advocates on menopause issues and sells a host of related products, and Perelel Health, a supplement company, launched a campaign to get Newsom to sign AB 432, which is expected to pass the Legislature in the final weeks of California’s session. It is a modified version of legislation the governor shot down last year.

The bill, from Bay Area Democrat Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, would require health plans to cover menopause-related treatments. It also provides incentives for doctors to get additional training on menopause outside of medical school as part of their continuing education requirements.

“It’s sort of a desert island for women in midlife,” Berry told POLITICO of the lack of knowledge about menopause among doctors and patients. The Academy Award winner said she endured years of misdiagnoses and thousands of dollars in medical expenses before learning at 54 that she had been experiencing the effects of perimenopause, the period before menopause. “We’re half the population, and we've gone far too long being ignored. It's really a human rights issue.”

Menopause, the period when a woman’s menstrual cycle slows and eventually ends, marks the transition out of fertility and typically occurs between the ages of 45 and 55. In addition to hormonal changes, menopause is associated with dozens of symptoms, including changes to cardiovascular health, cognition, and the immune system. Symptoms can start as early as 10 years before the start of menopause.

Through Berry’s campaign, called “Turn Up The Heat,” Respin and Perelel Health are sending emails to their customers and posting messages on social media. The emails encourage people to send a message to Newsom pushing him to sign the bill if it hits his desk.

“By sending this letter, you’ll send a message to Sacramento that California women deserve the care, understanding, and resources to navigate menopause with dignity and health,” reads the campaign, which was shared first with POLITICO. “Together, we can close the gap in care and create a future where no woman is left to face menopause alone.”

The legislative push around menopause issues started in 2023 with the bipartisan “Advancing Menopause and Mid-Life Women's Health Act,” a federal bill that would have appropriated $275 million for federal research on menopause.

When that fizzled out, Berry’s group pivoted to statehouses. At the end of last year, she and her policy advisers had meetings with state lawmakers and governors to pitch menopause policy ideas.

“We will keep pushing, and we will keep going to Washington and doing what we're doing, but we really feel like we can get real things done on a state level,” Berry said. “It's a smaller bite, it's a tiny win, but all of these tiny wins will add up to the big win.”

The celebrity offensive has scored some of those small wins outside the Golden State.

In July, Maine appropriated $20,000 for a public awareness campaign. Illinois created a menopause awareness week this year, and expanded access to treatment for Medicaid patients last year. In Michigan, lawmakers are considering setting aside $2.5 million for menopause initiatives like a statewide medical school curriculum. Lawmakers there are also putting together a package of more menopause bills for next year, as is Pennsylvania. Rhode Island passed workplace protections into law this summer, and similar ideas have come up in New York, New Jersey, Arizona and elsewhere.

In California, Berry isn’t waiting to see if the bill passes before ratcheting up the pressure on the governor. Newsom has said no to the idea before.

A year ago, the governor vetoed Bauer-Kahan’s AB 2467, which was similar to the current bill. In explaining his decision, Newsom said the insurance coverage requirements were “too far reaching,” especially for treatments not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Particularly problematic for Newsom was a provision that insurance companies were to cover all treatments without “utilization management,” a tactic health plans use to limit access to treatment in order to cut down on costs and unnecessary procedures.

“Frankly, I think our veto in part last year was because of the broader fight,” on utilization management, Bauer-Kahan said. “We’re confident we can get it to his desk; the question is can we get a signature.”

Since Newsom’s veto last year, the politics of insurance coverage have only gotten hotter in Sacramento. California’s doctors lobby launched a legislative offensive this year to limit when health plans can employ utilization management and other cost saving measures. Half of those four bills died and one has seen heavy amendments.

While the Legislature works on the remaining bills to scale back these insurance practices, Newsom is trying to ramp them up. In his budget this year, the governor directed the state to put up more hurdles for patients, such as requiring them to get prior approval from their insurer for a drug, to save the state money on prescriptions.

The insurance industry also works every year against bills that require health plans to cover certain treatments, like those for menopause.

The menopause bill would be another example of California adding to a growing list of costly benefits that plans are mandated to cover, said Mary Ellen Grant, a spokesperson with the California Association of Health Plans. She noted that a late amendment to the bill exempted the state’s Medi-Cal insurance plans from having to cover treatments for menopause symptoms.

“If the state isn't willing to cover the cost of it, why should commercial health plans be required?” Grant said. “All it's going to do is increase health care costs for everybody.”

The latest version of Bauer-Kahan’s bill scales back some of the new requirements insurance companies would face. Patients, for example, would be entitled to unrestricted access to FDA-approved treatments only. Also, while a previous version mandated menopause training for doctors as part of the education they must do to keep their licenses up to date, the new bill awards them twice the number of education credits for menopause training but does not require it.

The watering down of the bill comes as California is already behind what other states are doing, said Hannah Linkenhoker, a policy adviser to Berry at JSSK, the entertainment law firm that represents the actress. And she said she has received little indication of what Newsom will do if the bill lands on desk.

“It would be a huge mistake if he vetoes this bill,” said Linkenhoker. “I think it would be enraging to women in California. It's actually enraging to women when they hear that he vetoed it last year.”

The governor’s office doesn’t typically comment on pending legislation, said spokesperson Izzy Gardon.

“Last year’s veto message speaks for itself,” he said.