Most health insurance plans cover birth control without requiring you to pay anything out of pocket. Some employers are exempt, and federal law makes exceptions that allow health plans to cover limited forms of birth control. But there are ways to appeal to your insurance company if you're forced to pay for birth control prescribed by your doctor.
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If you have health insurance, specified types of birth control should be free to you because your plan is required to cover the full cost.
Birth control is a type of preventive care. Under the Affordable Care Act of 2010, most health insurance plans must cover the total cost of preventive care, meaning they don't charge you coinsurance or a copayment. Besides contraceptives, preventive care that's fully covered by insurance under the ACA includes annual wellness checkups, disease screenings and immunizations.
The ACA's requirements apply to birth control methods approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and prescribed to women (so procedures like vasectomies aren't included). Insurers must cover at least one form of each birth control method without charging out-of-pocket fees to patients.
FDA-approved birth control methods fall into six groups:
Even if you're insured, a number of exceptions in the ACA may prevent you from getting birth control for free. Here are the factors:
In practice, medical management tactics can steer you toward generic drugs and devices by making you pay out of pocket for brand-name options or jump through hoops to get your contraceptive of choice covered. If your prescribed form of birth control isn't fully covered, you should talk to your doctor and go through your insurer's waiver process.
If you don't have health insurance or your insurance doesn't cover birth control, there are other options for obtaining contraceptives for little or no cost.
People earning low incomes who qualify for Medicaid can get free family planning services. In most states, those services include birth control, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Some health clinics provide family planning and preventive health services at little or no cost. These Title X clinics receive federal funding through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Title X Family Planning program.
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Taryn Phaneuf writes for NerdWallet. Email: tphaneuf@nerdwallet.com.
The article Does Insurance Cover Birth Control? originally appeared on NerdWallet.