Want To Know Whether Your New Obamacare Plan Covers Abortion? Good Luck

BY TARA CULP-RESSLER

More than seven million Americans have now selected a new insurance plan on Obamacare’s state-level marketplaces, and the people who signed up last year are already using their new coverage. But there are some aspects of the new plans that remain confusing. It’s difficult for enrollees to figure out whether their insurance covers abortion services.

According to a recent analysis from the Guttmacher Institute, the lack of national standards for conveying information about abortion coverage on the marketplaces has left a confusing landscape for Americans who want to know where their Obamacare plan stands. Making matters more complicated, a growing number of restrictions limiting insurance coverage for abortion ensure that it’s different in every state.

Thirty four states have imposed some kind of limits on which insurance plans are allowed to cover abortion care. Lawmakers can accomplish this through two major avenues, either by restricting public programs or the private market. For years, the federal Hyde Amendment has prevented low-income women from using their public Medicaid plans to help pay for the cost of an abortion. And now, the health reform law has actually given states a new opening to limit access to private abortion coverage as well.

Under Obamacare, each state is allowed to decide whether to offer plans on its marketplace that cover abortion care. States are also allowed to enact explicit bans on this type of coverage, so more than 20 states have taken the opportunity to outlaw it. That’s had a big impact on the insurance market. By the Kaiser Family Foundation’s estimations, about half of the U.S. women of reproductive age who are gaining insurance under Obamacare won’t have coverage for elective abortions.

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http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/04/15/3426742/obamacare-abortion-coverage-transparency/