Tag: preventive services

Health Plan Restrictions on Contraceptive Coverage: It’s like asking people to “renew their seat belt each month”

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The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has lowered financial barriers to birth control by requiring health plans to cover contraceptives at no cost sharing, but restrictions limit the availability and affordability of certain methods. While we’ve come a long way in ensuring access to this essential service, one hundred years after Margaret Sanger opened the first Planned Parenthood clinic in Brooklyn, nearly half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned. Addressing the unmet need for contraceptives and enabling women to maintain consistent and accurate drug use is a public health issue that affects insurers, consumers, and providers.

New Guidance Clarifying Preventive Services under the Affordable Care Act

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The Affordable Care Act requires most health plans to cover preventive services without cost sharing and enables consumers to access evidence-based medical care such as cancer screenings and immunizations for children. Implementation of this requirement, however, has raised questions and caused confusion among insurers, providers and consumers. Sandy Ahn reviews the Administration’s most recent guidance on this critical ACA provision, designed to clarify for insurers what they must do to comply and ensure that consumers receive the benefits they are promised under the law.

New Report Finds Patients Pay for Confusion Over Colonoscopy Screening

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Today, the Kaiser Family Foundation—in partnership with CHIR, the American Cancer Society, and the National Colorectal Cancer Roundtable—released a new report exploring how private insurers are applying cost-sharing for colorectal cancer screening, such as colonoscopies. Kevin Lucia, one of the report's authors, discusses what the findings mean for this new benefit under the Affordable Care Act.

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