Health plans should offer women free contraception and HIV screening, IOM says Health Consultant

Health plans should offer women free contraception and HIV screening, IOM says

All health plans should cover the full cost of contraceptives and an annual HIV test for all sexually active women, an expert Institute of Medicine panel recommended on Tuesday. Now its up to the Department of Health and Human Services, which asked the panel for the recommendations, to decide whether to accept them.

Some background: The Affordable Care Act says that all new health plans must pay 100 percent of the cost a specified list of preventive services. But the law also instructed that the government should take a closer look at preventive care for women, and add more services to fill in any gaps that exist. Thats what the panel just did.

The most hotly anticipated question was whether the expert panel would include birth control on their list. They did, emphatically, pointing out that nearly half of all U.S. pregnancies are unintended. In addition, they said:

Women with unintended pregnancies are more likely to receive delayed or no prenatal care, and unintended pregnancy also increases the risk of babies being born preterm or at a low birth weight.

They recommended coverage of all contraceptive methods approved by the FDA, including emergency contraception, or the morning-after pill, which is essentially a high-dose birth control pill. (Note that the morning-after pill is not the same as the abortion pillThe evidence is actually quite good, said Linda Rosenstock, M.D., dean of the school of public health at the University of California Los Angeles. Its sometimes hard for a woman and her clinician to understand the full range of risk. Some women may have partners who are engaging in risky behaviors of which they may not be aware.

Other recommended preventive services include: • Screening pregnant women for gestational diabetes. • A DNA test for human papillomavirus (HPV) in women over 30 who have a normal Pap smear, in order to identify women at higher risk of developing cervical cancer in the future. • Annual counseling on STDs for all sexually active women. • Lactation support and counseling, including rental of breastfeeding equipment. • Screening and counseling for domestic violence. • At least one well-woman visit per year to deliver these various preventive services

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