Coverage to extend to birth control

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

A half-century after the advent of the pill, the Obama administration on Monday ushered in a change in women’s health care potentially as transformative: coverage of birth control as prevention, with no copays.

Services ranging from breast pumps for new mothers to counseling on domestic violence also were included in the broad expansion of women’s preventive care under President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul.

Since birth control is the most common drug prescribed to women, health plans should make sure it’s readily available, said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “Not doing it would be like not covering flu shots,” she said.

Officials said the women’s prevention package will be available Jan. 1, 2013, in most cases, resulting in a slight overall increase in premiums. Tens of millions of women are expected to benefit initially, a number that likely is to grow with time. At first, some plans may be exempt due to an arcane provision of the health-care law known as the “grandfather” clause. But those plans could face pressure from their members to include the new coverage.

Earlier requirements under the health-care law improved preventive coverage generally for people of both sexes.

Social and religious conservatives objected to the birth-control mandate, saying a conscience exception unveiled by the administration is insufficient.

Sebelius acted after a near-unanimous recommendation last month from a panel of experts at the prestigious Institute of Medicine, which advises the government.

Panel chairwoman Linda Rosenstock, dean of public health at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that prevention of unintended pregnancies is essential for the psychological, emotional and physical health of women.

“Over a span of generations from grandmothers to granddaughters, we have come from birth control being a hope and a wish — and almost luck — to being recognized as a part of health care that improves women’s health,” said Cynthia Pearson of the National Women’s Health Network, an advocacy group supporting the change.