All of the controversy over whether employers should be required to cover birth control in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act hasn't changed the fact that every insurance policy in the country provides birth control to its female members at no cost, whether it's technically the employer or the insurer providing it.
But when it comes to coverage of abortion, a far more controversial medical service, the picture is much more ambiguous. It's often extremely difficult to understand whether an insurance policy covers abortion, reports Kaiser Health News in a recent national analysis.
Much of the confusion is due to the fact that, unlike the contraception mandate, PPACA allowed state governments to determine whether abortion could be covered by plans on exchanges in their states.
Predictably, a number of Republican-run states barred exchange plans from covering abortion.
But surprisingly a number of red states didn't. Texas, West Virginia, Alaska and Wyoming are probably the most conservative states that do not prohibit PPACA plans from covering abortion services.
However, it's not just state laws that make it hard to what a plan covers. The insurers themselves don't seem interested in advertising whether or not they cover abortion.
“It's not easy to figure out whether a plan covers abortion and if it does, to what extent,” Kinsey Hasstedt, a public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, told Kaiser.
Furthermore, even in states that allow plans to cover abortion, there may not be a plan within a given area that does. And in a state such as Texas, which has imposed significant restrictions that forced the closure of many abortion providers, many residents live in areas with no nearby abortion clinics. Indeed, finding plans that provide specific services–including those far less controversial than abortion–is already a challenge for consumers in rural areas.
It appears that insurers are opting to avoid abortion altogether, particularly for plans that they make available in multiple states.
Of the 261 multi-state plans available across the country, only four cover abortion.
Complete your profile to continue reading and get FREE access to BenefitsPRO, part of your ALM digital membership.
Your access to unlimited BenefitsPRO content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
