The Trump Administration is preparing a rule that will allow religious employers to not provide contraception to their employees.
Federal officials, following through on a pledge by President Trump, have drafted a rule to roll back a federal requirement that many religious employers provide birth control coverage in health insurance plans….
the policy change is embodied in an interim final rule, it could take effect immediately upon publication in the Federal Register.
The pragmatic impact is that anyone who works for a religious employer and is looking to not have kids for several years should schedule an appointment for a long acting reversible contraceptive as soon as possible if that is something that you were already thinking about.
The second point is mechanical. There are changes to the ACA that can be done through rule making authority. Some of those changes will have a pragmatic lag between when a change can be made and when an insurer will actually make the change. This is not one of those situations. The mechanics of individualizing plans en masse with a rider that triggers three or four distinct denials is something that can be done quickly. The biggest challenge is making sure the test environment is clear of any other projects for a day or two to run dummy claims. After that a DBA or two is needed to upload new values to a system reference table.
Insurers won’t foot drag on this mid-year benefit update as birth control is on net a wash compared to unplanned pregnancy costs. It won’t change their profitability.
So if you were thinking about a LARC, go get one as soon as you can if you work for a religiously affiliated employer.