A new report released by the Institute of Medicine recommends that birth control and contraceptive counseling should be things that are completely covered by health insurance. The expert panel considers women’s health services to be preventative medicine, and therefore, available to insured women for free, (with no co-pay required).
Last year, a panel of medical and public health experts was put together. The group was specifically trying to determine if women’s health services fall under the category of “preventative health care”, or if they did not. The Affordable Care Act requires all health insurance plans that were started on or after September 23, 2010, to cover the cost of preventative health care services.
This means that people who had health insurance should not be charged a deductible, a co-pay, or coinsurance payment when the person has certain kinds of treatment done. Specifically, health insurance plans had to cover: the cost of blood pressure tests, diabetes tests, cholesterol tests, cancer screenings (including mammograms and colonoscopies), flu shots, pneumonia shots, routine vaccinations (against measles, polio, and meningitis), counseling and screening to ensure healthy pregnancies, regular well baby and well child visits (from birth to age 21), and counseling on quitting smoking, losing weight, treating depression, reducing the use of alcohol, and healthy eating.
You might have noticed that there are a lot of screenings, treatments, and health care that pertain to women that are not a part of that list. The Institute of Medicine’s report recommends that health insurance plans should cover the entire cost of screening for sexually transmitted diseases, lactation counseling, and “the full range of Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptive methods”.
The report specifically lists that “barrier methods, hormonal methods, emergency contraception, implanted devices, and sterilization” should be covered by insurance. Another thing that the Institute of Medicine’s report recommends should also be covered as “preventative health care” would be patient education and counseling for “all women with reproductive capacity”.
In short, this report highly recommends that contraception should be free, for women who have health insurance, because it is something that falls under the definition of preventative care. Right now, women who have health insurance coverage are paying out of pocket for at least some of the cost of birth control pills, or for the actual IUD itself, (but not necessarily the procedure to insert it). Clearly, it is advantageous for all women “with reproductive capacity” to have their health insurance cover the cost of contraception.
Ultimately, the Department of Health and Human Services needs to make it’s final decision about this matter. The Institute of Medicine report provides expert scientific opinion that the Department can consider while making its decision. It is worth noting that the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, was the one who commissioned the scientific study. Therefore, it is expected that she will endorse the report’s recommendations.
On the other side of the matter, there are groups such as the Family Research Council. These groups feel that certain types of contraception are “abortifacients”, and are fighting to prevent health insurance plans from covering the costs of contraception. I have no information about what the reasoning behind that particular belief happens to be.
Image by Nate Grigg on Flickr