Could free birth control be headed our way? The possibility is there and it is a welcome development if it happens.
One aspect of the health care reforms undertaken by President Obama is that providing basic preventive health services will be mandatory under new health plans starting this fall. Many women’s advocacy groups argue that contraception should be included in these mandated health services because it is part of basic health care for a woman.
Many health plans already cover prescription contraceptives because 27 states have laws in place to require some level of coverage. But further expanding the coverage could go a long way to reducing an estimated 3 million unplanned pregnancies that occur each year.
It makes sense to make birth control a more affordable option. Experts pinpoint the costs of contraceptives as a big factor behind unplanned pregnancies. Most plans, even when offering some coverage, still require a hefty co-pay ranging from $20 to $50 per month for birth control pills.
The conservative viewpoint is to preach abstinence from sex, but that is not a practical or realistic solution. But making birth control options accessible to lower-income patients will help in a variety of ways. It can encourage more teens to practice safe sex. It will help adult women who could suffer complications if they were to bear children. And it will allow couples to practice family planning and wait to have children at a point in time where such an option is more affordable for them.
A few preventive health measures, such as mammograms, will be required to be covered by health plans under the new law. It would not be a stretch to include birth control. From the prospective of employers, covering birth control should be a welcome notion because preventing a birth is much less expensive than paying out a lengthy maternity leave. And for a patient, the costs of giving birth and raising a child are astronomical compared to using contraceptives.
When you look at it from a common sense perspective, free birth control is a sound idea.