Women's health experts are calling on a federally convened expert panel to require new health insurance plans to cover contraceptives without cost-sharing under a provision in the federal health reform law (PL 111-148), Minnesota Public Radio reports. One component of that provision, proposed by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), requires public and private health plans to cover the costs of certain women's preventive health services, such as mammograms and vaccinations, with no patient copayments and deductibles.

The expert panel meets for the first time next week to discuss whether contraception should be included in the provision. According to MPR, even in plans that provide coverage, copayments for contraceptives can be significant.

Sarah Stoesz, CEO of Planned Parenthood for Minnesota, North and South Dakota, said women "understand the injustice of having to pay for (birth control) when men are not similarly required to make large out-of-pocket expenses to maintain their own health."

According to a 2007 survey by the Guttmacher Institute, one-third of women taking prescription contraceptives regularly delayed or stopped using birth control because they could not afford it. The institute's Adam Sonfield said about 50% of unintended pregnancies occur among women who inconsistently use birth control.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops does not believe contraception is a preventive service, a position it outlined in a letter to HHS, MPR reports. USCCB spokesperson Richard Doerflinger said that pregnancy is not an illness, adding that the government should not mandate contraception coverage when some people who pay for health plans have religious or moral objections to it. He said USCCB wants to work with Congress to create an exemption for organizations and employers that object to paying for contraception coverage (Stawicki, Minnesota Public Radio, 11/8).

Opinion Piece Discusses Continued Objections to Family Planning

"In the nearly eight decades since [Minnesota's] pioneers in women's health expressed their certainty of 'better and happier human living,' everything has changed and nothing has changed," Planned Parenthood's Stoesz writes in an MPR commentary. These advocates "would be happy to see that in 2010, emergency contraception is available to rape and incest victims in hospital emergency rooms across the state," she writes, adding that they would also be "most impressed" with advances in oral contraception and "the wide variety of contraceptive options now available to women."

However, they "would be utterly dismayed but probably not all that surprised to find that affordability and access still pose enormous barriers to women, and that familiar adversaries are still hard at work generating as much controversy as possible over the issue of birth control," Stoesz continues. She notes that the "women's health pioneers of Minnesota were ridiculed by church and even medical authorities," adding, "It would shock these women to see that their adversaries' thought processes have not evolved much since then." Stoesz concludes, "At least the same is not true of forward-thinking Americans, 71% of whom say prescription birth control should be covered with any out-of-pocket costs" (Stoesz, Minnesota Public Radio,11/10).

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