| Today Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius announced a victory for advocates of (free!) birth control coverage. Ever since health care reform passed, a battle has raged over whether certain religious groups will be required to offer health plans with no-cost coverage for birth control to female employees. Turns out, they do.
The Affordable Care Act that requires employers to offer health plans that cover contraception without co-pay by August 1, 2012. The rule already exempted faith-based groups with objections to contraception and whose employees share the objection. Today's announcement impacts other faith-based groups without objection and whose employees do not share the objection. Though they'll be given a one-year grace period to comply, they eventually have to offer coverage.
Twenty-eight states already require coverage of contraception, but of course Texas is not one of them. So this is good news if you work almost anywhere in Texas, not to mention the rest of the country.
Beyond birth control coverage, health care reform is already having a big impact in Texas. Healthcare.gov has a useful snapshot of the immediate effects. Some highlights:
- An estimated 149,000 young adults in Texas will now be able to stay on their parents' insurance plans until their 26th birthday.
- Insurance companies are prohibited from denying coverage to the 1.6 million children in Texas with pre-existing conditions.
- $56.9 million in new grant funding in Texas for things like public health infrastructure, community health centers, research, primary care training and protecting consumers from some of the worst insurance industry practices.
And if you don't like numbers, but do like cartoons, check out this School House Rock-style video over at Think Progress.
As if passing the Affordable Care Act wasn't already worthy of celebration, it's even better when the benefits actually start kicking in. And after the SCOTUS ruling on the redistricting maps, we'll take all the good news we can get. |
