There have been many laws and regulations passed over the years that improve health insurance for consumers. Many of these changes are general, and do not affect the type of health care services and treatments that would only be needed by women. Two states, however, have passed laws that actually will improve health insurance for women.
Last month, Vermont was considering passing a bill that would require health insurance companies to cover the services of midwives. This week, that bill has been made into law. It was signed by Governor Peter Shumlin, and requires all insurers to pay mid-wives who attend births that take place at private residences.
Previous to this law, Vermont was covering the cost of midwife services for low income families. However, people who were able to afford private health insurance were not being covered for those same services, even if the insurance they purchased included maternity care. This new law is going to ensure that all expectant mothers can get the coverage for the kind of health care that they want.
Those in favor of the new law point out that in Vermont, home birthing costs under $4000. This means it is around one third of what it would cost to go to the hospital, and have a baby there, instead of at home. Those against this law are from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, who say there is medical evidence that the risk of newborn death has a “two to three fold increase” as the result of a home birth, rather than a hospital birth. Women in Vermont will now have a choice that doesn’t have to be based on whether or not their insurance company will cover the costs.
Legislators in Oregon recently voted unanimously to close a legal loophole that some insurance companies were using as an excuse to refuse coverage of reconstructive surgeries for women with breast cancer. In short, the new law changes some wording in the previous law in order to prevent insurance companies from neglecting to live up to the intention of that law.
The Women’s Health and Cancer Rights Act of 1998 is a federal law. It states that if an insurance company sells a health insurance policy that covers the cost of a mastectomy, then the insurer must also cover the cost of breast reconstructive surgery. A mastectomy is a complete surgical removal of the entire breast. This procedure is usually done on breast cancer patients. Statistically, the majority of people who develop breast cancer are women.
Sometimes, a full mastectomy is not required, and the patient will only require a lumpectomy. This is a partial breast removal. Since technically, a lumpectomy is a slightly different procedure than a mastectomy, some insurance companies were refusing to cover the cost of breast reconstructive surgery for women who had undergone a lumpectomy.
The new law clearly defines mastectomy as “the surgical removal of all or part of a breast or breast tumor suspected”. This means that insurers can no longer legally refuse to cover the cost of reconstructive surgery for women who had undergone either mastectomies or lumpectomies in Oregon.
Image by Gloria Bell on Flickr