US says insurers must fully cover birth control

WASHINGTON: Unted States health insurance companies must fully cover womens birth control and other preventive health care services under Obama administration rules released on Monday, Reuters reports.The mandate from the Health and Human Services Department represents a landmark decision in a decades-long debate on womens health issues that has pitted family planning groups against conservative organisations.Under the law, were making it illegal to charge women more just because of their gender, HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, said on Monday.The guidelines, a product of last years health care overhaul, go into effect on Monday, and require insurers to do away with co-payments on coverage of preventive care services for women in all new plans beginning in August 2012.The rules largely follow recommendations from a scientific advisory group released last month.The US Institute of Medicine said in a July report that all government-approved birth control methods, including the morning-after pill, taken shortly after sexual intercourse to stop a pregnancy, should be included in the US list of preventive health services.The newly required coverage also includes free screenings for gestational diabetes, testing for human Papillomavirus in women over 30, counseling for HIV and sexually transmitted infections, and screening for domestic violence.Today is a historic victory for womens health and women across the country, said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The decision by HHS is monumental for millions of women.Conservative groups balked at the decision to force private insurers to fully cover birth control. HHS says the intent of its preventive services mandate is to help stop health problems before they start, said Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, chairman of the pro-life activities committee at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. But pregnancy is not a disease, and children are not a health problem.In a nod to conservative groups, the HHS included an amendment to its final rules that would allow religious employees and institutions to choose whether to cover contraception services in their insurance.For at least 50 years, religious objections to birth control have made the topic a hot-button social issue in the United States. In 1965, a Supreme Court ruling ended an era when states could ban the use of contraceptives, arguing that such power violated the right to marital privacy. In 1972, another case upheld unmarried couples rights to the use of contraceptives.
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