Women Are Paying for Birth Control When They Shouldn’t Have To

Yet many insurers are still charging for contraceptives — some in the form of co-payments, others by denying coverage altogether.

A Quarter of Women Are Paying Unnecessarily for Contraceptives

In his letter, Senator Sanders cited a recent survey by KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization, that found that roughly 25 percent of women with private insurance plans said they had paid at least some part of the cost of their birth control; 16 percent reported that their insurance plans had offered partial coverage, and 6 percent noted that their plans did not cover contraceptives at all. Additionally, a 2022 congressional investigation, which analyzed 68 health plans, found that the process to apply for exceptions and have contraceptives covered was “burdensome” for consumers and that insurance companies denied, on average, at least 40 percent of exception requests.

In a letter responding to Congress earlier this year, AHIP, a national lobbying group that represents insurance companies, noted that the group “will continue to partner with the Administration, Congress, and policymakers to ensure that consumers have affordable access to contraception consistent with the law.”

Despite the fact that the federal mandate has existed for more than a decade, companies continue to skirt the law because “these mandates are rarely enforced, and the penalties for ignoring them are relatively low,” said Anna Bahr, director of communications for Senator Sanders. Each time a company is penalized, it finds other ways to deny coverage, she said.

In 2015, a study by the National Women’s Law Center, a nonprofit legal organization, found that several insurance companies claimed they were not covering hormonal rings, intrauterine devices or patches because they covered another hormonal method: the birth control pill. That practice was a violation of the mandate and prompted the Obama administration to crack down.