Instead, the new rules “would increase the number of unnecessary physician office visits and raise the cost of coverage,” she said in a statement.
The list of women’s services issued Monday supplements a broader version for all populations released last summer under the health-care law and now in effect. It requires all new private health plans to cover at no additional cost preventive services, such as mammograms, Pap smears, colonoscopies, immunizations, blood pressure tests and screening for patients at risk for certain sexually transmitted infections.
Video
CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller reports on historic new health rules that require health insurance companies to cover birth control for women. Then, Chris Wragge talks to White House Deputy Senior Adviser Stephanie Cutter about the new rules and the history of how they came into effect.
As part of Monday’s announcement, officials proposed an exception: religious institutions that offer insurance to their workers would have the option of refusing to include birth control. Officials said the policy was modeled on the most common accommodation for churches found among 28 states that already require insurers to cover contraception.
The proposal, which is open for public comment over the next month, dismayed women’s rights advocates such as Judith Waxman of the National Women’s Law Center.
“We think that all women should have access to these services through their health plans,” she said. “This was not in the statute. . . . We hope [the administration] reconsiders and does not go this route.”
By contrast, Sister Mary Ann Walsh of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops decried the exemption as too narrow. It would apply only to institutions whose purpose is to inculcate religious values and that primarily employ and primarily serve people sharing the organization’s religious tenets.
“The bishops are concerned that this would exclude most Catholic social service agencies and health-care providers, so it’s not much of an exemption at all,” Walsh said.
Catholic hospitals and Catholic charities such as food pantries don’t limit themselves to helping only Catholics, she noted. “Serving all people in need is part of the mission of the church.”
Some religious and socially conservative groups also objected to the inclusion of emergency contraception, such as Plan B and Ella. Both drugs mainly work by inhibiting ovaries from releasing eggs. But antiabortion advocates contend there is evidence the drugs can also prevent an already-fertilized egg from implanting in the womb, which they consider equivalent to abortion.
Plans that were in existence before the health-care law was adopted are exempt from the new rules. However, such plans can lose their grandfathered status if they make a range of changes to their policies that limit benefits or increase members’ costs. Administration officials predict that by 2013, 34 million women aged 18 to 65 will be in plans covered by the rules.
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