Most health insurance plans must for now continue to cover preventive services, including the HIV prevention pill, with no out-of-pocket costs for consumers, under a deal reached between the Department of Justice and a group of employers in Texas.
The agreement is in effect while this case, which challenges the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that insurance plans cover certain preventive medical care without requiring any out-of-pocket payments from patients, is litigated in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. The Texas-based employers have contested the authority of several government task forces — called U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the Health Resources and Services Administration, and the Advisory Council on Immunization Practices — to determine which preventive services must be covered.
The deal, which was approved by the appeals court, ensures that at least for now, the HIV prevention medication known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, will remain affordable and accessible.
The agreement also affects a range of other reproductive health services that insurance plans currently must cover with no copays, including HIV screening, chlamydia and gonorrhea screenings, breastfeeding support, mental health interventions for pregnant and postpartum people, and counseling and treatment for people at higher risk of breast cancer.
The employers who filed suit over the requirements have argued that they should not have to buy insurance that covers contraception, claiming that doing so violates their religious freedom. Currently, the ACA requires that health insurance plans cover at least one version of each form of birth control, without requiring people pay anything out of pocket.
They have made the same argument about buying insurance that covers PreP, claiming that both benefits make them “complicit in facilitating homosexual behavior, drug use, and sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman.” But so far, courts have not been friendly to those arguments.
This agreement is hardly the last word. The deal determines only what benefits health insurance plans must provide while this case is being litigated.
The judges will soon weigh in on the merits of the case itself — whether the ACA’s preventive services requirement is constitutional at all — and could still decide to undo that mandate entirely. Doing so could open up consumers, particularly women and LGBTQ+ people, who are more likely to use these benefits, to health costs that they have not had to pay for years, gutting one of the health law’s most significant gender-based benefits. Depending on how the 5th Circuit rules, this case could ultimately end up before the Supreme Court.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.