Trump-Pence Administration Issues Proposed Rule Designed to Eliminate Insurance Coverage of Abortion in the ACA Marketplaces

From the National Women's Law Center

All health insurance plans should cover all basic health services for women, including birth control, abortion, pre-natal care, childbirth and post-partum care. Yet, merely a day after voters made clear that health care is a top priority, the Department of Health and Human Services released a Proposed Rule designed to take abortion coverage away from individuals who get their insurance through the ACA marketplace.

The Proposed Rule is designed to eliminate coverage of abortion altogether.

• The Proposed Rule would drastically expand the burdensome and arbitrary accounting requirements imposed on qualified health plans that cover medically necessary abortion. This would impose significant barriers on insurance companies and on consumers who need a comprehensive health plan that covers abortion.
• These proposed barriers are likely to cause insurance companies to stop providing insurance coverage of abortion. Indeed, insurance issuers have said that barriers like the ones being proposed would be onerous and act as a strong disincentive to covering abortion.
  
• The impact of the Proposed Rule could reach well beyond the marketplace, causing insurance companies to drop abortion coverage in other markets as well.
• The Proposed Rule is the latest attempt by the Trump-Pence Administration to eliminate private insurance coverage of abortion altogether.
  

The Trump-Pence Administration’s Proposed Rule is targeting states where abortion coverage is available in the marketplaces.

• Already, 26 states prohibit insurance coverage of abortion in the ACA marketplaces. Women in those states do not have the comprehensive reproductive health coverage they need.
• With this rule, the Trump-Pence Administration is seeking to eliminate abortion coverage in the remaining states. The Proposed Rule could result in 1.3 million women who purchase their health plan on the ACA marketplace in those states losing critical coverage of abortion
  

The Proposed Rule would endanger women’s health, economic security, and future wellbeing.

• Coverage for medically necessary abortion is critical to women’s health and economic well-being.
  
• A woman who has to pay for an abortion out of pocket may be forced to delay the procedure to raise the necessary funds.
  
• Women denied insurance coverage of abortion may face high out-of-pocket costs that create severe financial strain. More than half of women who get abortions without coverage spend the equivalent of more than one-third of their monthly income on the procedure and its associated costs.
  
• Studies show that the Hyde Amendment’s denial of abortion coverage in Medicaid forces one in four lower-income women seeking an abortion to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term.