A growing number of employer-sponsored group health plans are covering birth-control pills and
other contraceptives, according to a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute.
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Download NowThe study found that 86 percent of group health plans covered contraceptives
in 2002, compared with 28 percent about a decade earlier, the Washington Post
Reports.
Sharon Camp, president of the Guttmacher Institute, tells the newspaper that
legislative, legal, and regulatory actions prompted many of the health-plan
changes. The study estimates that state laws mandating coverage for contraceptives
if health plans covered other prescription drugs accounted for 30 to 40 percent
of the increase in coverage, the newspaper reports.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has ruled that the
Pregnancy Discrimination Act requires health plans to provide the same coverage
for prescription contraceptives that they provide for other drugs, devices,
or services used to prevent medical conditions other than pregnancy.
Camp tells the newspaper that other factors contributed to increase in coverage
as well. Camp says the change was also spurred by women increasingly demanding
contraceptive coverage when health plans began covering the male impotency drug
Viagra, which the Food and Drug Administration approved in 1998.
"At the time Viagra came out and was immediately covered, many health
plans were still defining contraceptives as lifestyle drugs," Camp says.
"The outrage that women felt was enormous and, we think, really drove the
movement towards contraceptive equity."
The study, which looked at 205 healthcare insurers, is published in the journal
Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.
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