Employee Benefits- Contraception Coverage Through Reform?
Posted by Chris Conley on Wed, Aug 18, 2010 @ 02:58 PM
I believe that health care reform guidelines should include first dollar coverage for contraceptives.
It’s only common sense to provide this employee benefit to women who may not be able to afford the co-pays or deductibles for these drugs. I personally know of at least two young women in their early twenties who, even though their employers funded a significant portion of their annual H.S.A. deductibles, still struggled to afford the cost of these oral contraceptives.
As a result, both of these young women stopped taking their drugs altogether. 
This is disturbing to me because this could easily result in unplanned pregnancies. Most Americans do not want unplanned pregnancies that could result in abortion, poor prenatal care, or low birth weight. I see no reason why Americans wouldn’t agree on expanding access to contraception and requiring insurance carriers to cover these out-of-pocket costs for women. Insurance carriers wouldn’t be put out either as it is only a nominal percent of premiums.
In fact, it appears the opposite is true – it can actually cost a good deal more if they exclude contraceptive coverage. As a seasoned employee benefits consultant, I happen to know the average cost of a normal labor and delivery is upwards of $10,000. This does not include complicated pregnancies, premature births, or c-section section deliveries.
Take a look at the below statistic cited within this CNN.com article: http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/06/07/sonfield.contraceptive.health/index.html?iref=allsearch
“The two-thirds of sexually active U.S. women who use contraception consistently and correctly account for only 5 percent of all unintended pregnancies and abortions.”
The extremely low unplanned pregnancy rate among women who use contraception properly and accurately is staggering to me!
To me, this is unarguable and it should be mandated in the upcoming national healthcare reform laws as we all want to see wanted healthy babies being born in the world!
Written by: Jenn Patton, Sr. Account Manager
Photo by: Gnarls Monkey
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