“It is completely unacceptable that insurance plans routinely ignore mandated coverage with little enforcement or accountability,” Sanders wrote to GAO leader Jean L. Dodaro, urging him to open an investigation.
Democrats have focused on ensuring access to contraception amid broader challenges to reproductive health services. Senators voted last week to make contraception a federal right, but it died over Republican opposition. Hard-right conservatives have attacked contraception by inaccurately characterizing various methods as causing abortions, and access to contraception faces funding challenges at the state level.
“We’re very concerned, frankly,” said Rachel Fahy, vice president of policy and strategic partnerships at the Power to Decide nonprofit, which focuses on reproductive health, saying she worries access to birth control is facing “death by a thousand cuts” and that the plan’s failure to comply with federal law makes the situation worse.
“Nothing is more infuriating than hearing about this still happening more than a decade after this provision was put into place,” Fay said. “If people are still not getting the contraceptive benefits to which they are entitled, then this is an enforcement issue.”
In his letter to the GAO, Sanders said: Recent Research Vermont found that three insurance companies improperly charged residents more than $1.5 million for birth control, according to a 2022 investigation by the House Oversight Committee. found Health insurers have persistently rejected their members’ requests for free contraception. Some have refused to cover certain brands of contraceptives because they cover therapeutically equivalent generic versions. But insurers are required to provide a process for women to access contraception that a doctor determines is medically necessary.
16% of contraceptive users with private insurance still Self-pay in 2022That’s according to a poll by KFF, a nonpartisan health research organization.
“The goal of this policy is to provide full coverage for women’s contraceptives, but there are so many methods that it’s complicated to implement,” said Brittney Frederiksen, an associate director at KFF who works on reproductive health policy. The law requires health insurance to cover at least one method in each category, such as oral contraceptives, but there are hundreds of different types of oral contraceptives that health care providers may prescribe to patients, Frederiksen said.
“write [regulations] “It’s hard to cover all of this without essentially saying you have to cover everything,” Frederiksen said.
The Biden administration took several steps to strengthen access to contraception in January. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra I sent a letter The bill requires health insurance companies to provide free contraception, and the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Labor Further Guidance How to implement federal requirements.
Faye said the Biden administration could go further to collect complaints from women who face barriers to accessing contraception. She pointed to the administration’s recent efforts to streamline the way patients who are denied emergency abortions and other emergency care can report them.
“I would love to see the government do something similar with contraception,” Fay said. “I’d like to see it be a really user-friendly system where people can say, ‘Hey, I don’t think I’m getting the contraception I should be getting.'”
