It is now official. Employers who consider themselves to be church-affiliated will be required to cover birth control in the health insurance plans that they offer to employees. Churches, synagogues, and mosques will not have to cover birth control. Religious colleges, hospitals, and social services agencies will.
In August of 2011, a health reform law was passed that placed all forms of birth control that have been approved by the FDA into the category of preventative care. This means that all health insurance policies must cover the cost of birth control free of charge, without requiring women to pay for a co-pay, coinsurance, or part of their deductible in order to receive this type of health care.
The law will begin taking effect starting in August of this year. At that time, all private health insurance policies that were purchased after August of 2011 will be required to adhere to this law. This includes individual policies as well as employer sponsored health insurance plans.
Since that time, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has been fighting against this requirement. Other faith based health providers, such as religious hospitals, health clinics at religious universities and colleges, and religion based social services, have been trying to find a way to avoid having to comply with this law.
Their argument is that since the use of birth control goes against their religious beliefs, these employers should not have to pay for their workers to have access to birth control. Another issue has to do with Plan B, which is a form of birth control that has been approved by the FDA.
These groups believe that Plan B causes abortion. This is not accurate. Perhaps they are thinking of RU486, which does cause abortion, (and is not approved by the FDA). Employers are not required to cover the cost of abortions in their employer sponsored health plans.
Churches, synagogues, mosques, and other places of worship are not required to offer their employees a health insurance plan that includes the coverage of birth control. The federal government allows this exception to the rule because it respects the religious beliefs of churches, synagogues, mosques, and other places where people go to practice their religion.
This week, the federal government officially denied this exception to religious hospitals, to colleges or universities that are affiliated with a religion, and to social services agencies that are run by a religious group. These types of religious employers will be required to cover birth control in the health plans they offer to employees.
These types of employers are being allowed some extra time to make these changes to their employer sponsored health plans. The requirement will take effect on August 1, 2013. Employees of these businesses will begin having access to birth control coverage beginning on January 1, 2014.
It comes to this basic truth. Employers cannot choose to control whether or not their female employees will have access to birth control, or other women’s health care. They cannot use a religion as an excuse to deny women access to preventative health care. They cannot impose their religious beliefs upon all of their employees.
Image by Florian Boyd on Flickr