The White House. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM
The administration of outgoing President Joe Biden has withdrawn proposed regulations that could have required employer-sponsored health plans to pay for over-the-counter contraceptives.
The administration had hoped to cut Americans' birth control costs by adding over-the-counter contraceptive purchases to the Affordable Care Act preventive services package.
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The ACA requires non-grandfathered health plans, including employers' self-insured health plans, to pay for the items in the basic preventive services package without imposing deductibles, copayments or other cost-sharing bills on the plan participants.
The U.S. Labor Department's Employee Benefits Security Administration proposed the preventive services package update Oct. 28, 2024, together with the U.S. Treasury Department's Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, before the Nov. 5, 2024, general elections.
Former President Donald Trump, a Republican who has supported efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, won and is set to return to the White House Jan. 20.
The proposed regulations attracted 268 comments.
"The Departments have determined it is appropriate to withdraw the proposed rules at this time, focusing instead on other matters," Biden administration officials say in notice that's expected to appear in the Federal Register, an official government regulatory publication, Wednesday.
The current federal preventive services package regulations continue to require major medical plans to pay for birth control devices and services provided by doctors and for birth control medications purchased using prescriptions.
The new draft regulation withdrawal is the second ACA preventive services package proposal withdrawal the Biden administration has announced in less than a month.
In December, administration officials withdrew draft regulations that could have affected the rules for employers who have moral objections to paying for birth control or other forms of preventive care, such as a drug that reduces the risk that people will get HIV.
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
