This guest post provided by our Medical Director.
A hard-fought day is finally here! Today, mandatory 100% coverage of a number of women’s preventive services, including the frustratingly controversial contraception provision, will go into place for many women. If you have an insurance plan written on or after today, it will now have to cover the following women’s preventive services with no copay:
- Well women visits
- HPV DNA testing
- STI – including HIV – counseling
- Breastfeeding support, supplies and counseling
- Domestic violence screening
- Contraception and contraceptive counseling
These are in addition to all the other preventive services that must already be covered. Not everyone will instantly have coverage today, though. First, you must already have insurance, and then you might have coverage right away if your insurance plan chooses. You might not have coverage until your plan renews. And if you work for a religious employer, you will probably have to wait another year as they have until August 2013 to implement the regulation. But woman are gaining ground.
However, there are still threats to contraceptive coverage. Two weeks ago, a federal judge dismissed a suit filed on behalf of seven states (Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas) who claimed that the contraception mandate violated their religious freedom because (I’m going to just directly quote from the Huffington Post, because the argument is convoluted):
“The states claimed that the contraception mandate violates religious freedom rights under the First Amendment by only carving out an exemption for those religious organizations that primarily serve and employ people of their own faiths. A Catholic charity, the attorney generals contended, would have to stop serving people of other religions in order to avoid having to pay for its employees’ birth control, and then those unserved people would have to turn to the state for assistance.”
And there are still two dozen other suits from religiously affiliated institutions such as universities that are pending. One of these was recently dismissed, but there are many more to come. And this past Friday, the birth control mandate suffered its first court loss in Colorado. But for the most part, for now, the contraception mandate is safe and we can celebrate one more step in the right direction for reducing the health disparities between men and women.
You also might find these posts interesting:
- Fired for Using Contraception? Maybe in Arizona!
- Contraception is Basic Preventative Health Care, Not a Luxury
- Plan B One Step: Too Complicated for Some, Limited Access for All
- Mirena, the Intrauterine Contraceptive: A Testimonial
- Plan B at the Pharmacy: Legality Doesn’t Equal Access
