Joining Hundreds of Thousands of Advocates and Patients, Sen. Van Hollen, Senate Democrats Demand Trump Administration Reinstate Birth Control Coverage for Millions of Women
Today,
In the letter, senators highlighted the enormous economic benefit of requiring health plans to cover preventive services, including birth control for women, without out-of-pocket costs.
"This requirement has helped 62.4 million women have coverage for birth control. As a result, they have been able to make decisions about their reproductive health care that strengthen their economic standing and allow them to decide if and when to start families," wrote the senators. "These IFRs also allow employers and insurance companies to once again discriminate against women by requiring them to pay more for the health care they need compared to their male counterparts."
The senators also noted that repealing the birth control mandate goes against the original intentions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which created explicit provisions to guarantee women access to preventive services.
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In addition to Senators Murray and
Full text of letter below and PDF can be found HERE (http://xitenow.com/browse.php?u=5rTcexJaAY7rpzc7LRdPS6dk3qZz20V8ORyObYbyAdloWoIWyefdJTcyNjyrliWtb7eAwQqg7gCRh3sUupCiejSn&b=5):
The Honorable
Acting Secretary
Dear Acting Secretary Hargan,
We write to strongly oppose the Departments of
Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) health plans are required to cover preventive services, including birth control for women, without out-of-pocket costs. This requirement has helped 62.4 million women have coverage for birth control.[2] As a result, they have been able to make decisions about their reproductive health care that strengthen their economic standing and allow them to decide if and when to start families.
Contrary to claims in the background section of the IFRs,
The IFRs offer justification for their sweeping exemptions by pointing to other statutory exemptions passed by
Ultimately, the IFRs allow employers - including large, for-profit entities - to claim a religious or moral objection to their employees having coverage for birth control and allow employers to deny individual employees coverage for necessary health care otherwise guaranteed by law. The rules also permit universities to deny access to birth control coverage for their students and insurance companies to refuse to cover birth control at all. The result of these changes is to allow employers and universities to apply their own religious or moral beliefs to deprive women of a benefit that is both central to women's equity and guaranteed to them by law. These drastic changes to women's access to health care are part of a troubling history of women being denied ownership of their own health care decisions - a history that has had a disastrous resurgence under the
These IFRs also allow employers and insurance companies to once again discriminate against women by requiring them to pay more for the health care they need compared to their male counterparts.
In creating these sweeping exemptions that block birth control coverage for women and discriminate against them - without authority and in violation of clear Congressional intent and regulatory requirements - the IFRs violate constitutional and statutory provisions, including the Establishment Clause and equal protection and due process guarantees of the
The IFRs claim that, despite the significant restrictions they impose, birth control is still readily accessible and that other federal government programs cover costs for low-income women. The IFRs fail to acknowledge that the
By instituting broad exemptions and no guarantee that women have another way to get coverage, these IFRs would undermine access to comprehensive birth control coverage. Rather than taking yet another destructive action to undermine health care, the Trump Administration should rescind these IFRs in their entirety.
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