The two bills creating the act were signed into law in 2010. The act requires all major medical plans, including employer-sponsored group health plans, to cover many preventive health services without imposing co-payments, deductibles or other payment requirements on the patients. A federal advisory panel says the list of preventive services available to women should include birth control benefits.

The Biden administration proposed eliminating an exemption for employers who have moral objections to use of birth control but who have no objections to use of birth control based on religious principles.

The Biden administration would have kept the exemption for religious employers in place, and it would have created a new way for those employers' employees to get birth control services without charge.

Related: Biden moves to undo rule allowing employers to opt out of contraceptive coverage

Officials estimated at the time that the proposed regulations would affect at least 109 employers and 126,400 employer plan participants.

The agencies' thinking

The Internal Revenue Service, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Employee Benefits Security Administration teamed up to develop the 2023 proposal, and they teamed up this week to withdraw the proposal.

The IRS is an arm of the U.S. Treasury Department, EBSA is an arm of the U.S. Labor Department and CMS is an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Agency officials reported in the withdrawal notice that they received 44,825 comments in response to the proposed regulations.

President-elect Donald Trump is preparing to enter the White House Jan. 20.

The Treasury Department, HHS and the Labor Department are withdrawing the proposed birth control benefits regulations partly because they want to "focus their time and resources on matters other than finalizing these rules," officials said.

The departments also want more time to consider the draft regulations in light of the comments received, officials said.

But the departments "may propose new rules in the future," officials said. "This withdrawal does not limit the departments' ability to make new regulatory proposals in the areas addressed by the withdrawn proposed rules, including new proposals that may be substantially identical or similar to those described therein."

The agencies still have an obligation to administer the statutory requirements the proposed rules would have implemented, officials said.

The history

The ACA calls for federal regulators to base the women's health services package on recommendations from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration.

In 2011, HRSA hired the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to create a women's health benefits advisory panel. The panel said the women's health services package should include services such as cervical cancer screening and birth control services.

In 2013, the administration of former President Barack Obama tried, and failed, to implement the HRSA contraceptive services recommendations in a way that would satisfy both supporters and opponents.

The Obama administration proposed letting nonprofit religious organizations opt out by notifying health insurers or other parties. The parties that received the opt-out notices were then supposed to make sure the affected employees had access to birth control benefits.

Opponents objected to the lack of an exemption for for-profit employers and the fact that religious employers that still have to file the opt-out notices. Religious employers said filing the opt-out notices would involve them in providing birth control.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in 2014, in the Hobby Lobby case, that closely held private employers need not provide birth control coverage.

In 2017, during Trump's first term in the White House, federal agencies moved to change the Obama administration's contraceptive benefits regulations and exempt religious employers and employers with moral objections to birth control from the requirements altogether. The Trump administration completed the exemption regulations in 2018, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the exemption regulations in 2020.

The Biden administration developed the draft regulations that were withdrawn this week in response to the 2018 Trump regulations.