Is women’s health care covered under obamacare?
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- Maternity care is one of the Ten Essential Health Benefits required in every health plan
- Preventive health services and screenings provide early detection of potentially serious conditions.
- Wellness programs seek to strengthen healthy lifestyles and avoid illnesses and diseases.
- Gender neutral approaches to providing health services that do not penalize women in pricing, deductibles, and annual or lifetime limits
Women’s health services are among the most important elements of health care reform in the Affordable Care Act. Preventive health services such as screenings for cancers and reproductive system issues, they get access to wellness programs tailored to the needs of women, and they get gender-neutral pricing and treatment under policy processes like deductibles and exclusions. Comparison shopping Is the best way to find the benefits that matter most to the individual or family situation. In the case of women’s health, every policy must guarantee the essential health benefits. There can be important differences in services, facilities, and network resources. Comparison shopping points the way to the coverage that matter most. Start comparing health insurance rates now by using our FREE tool above!
Ten Essential Health Benefits
These are ACA required coverages that have provided important basic health protections for everyone. They cannot be taken away because one needs them as was the practice before the ACA when insurers could drop clients who used a resource, or insurers that set arbitrary limits on needed resources. The protections of the ten essential benefits include the following items.
- Ten essential benefits must be in every plan
- Ten essential benefits have no lifetime dollar limits
- The ten essential benefits must have no annual dollar limits
Prevention is Better than Cure
The good health status is an important determination. The symptom-free baseline is a modern medical tool that sets the stage for more advanced medical practices yet to come. In the current state of medical technology, preventive care is the best way to help patients understand and maintain good health and symptom-free living.Under the Affordable Care Act, preventive care can include x-rays and physical exams. The assessment can lead to further diagnostic procedures and screenings.
The overall result is to obtain early detection of conditions that lead to severe disease or illness.
For example, early stages of diabetes can be controlled by diet and lifestyle changes whereas advanced diabetes is a life-threatening condition requiring extreme medical interventions like organ replacement, dialysis, high levels of medications, and frequent hospitalization.
Covered Maternity Benefits Can Vary
Covered benefits means that at least one service must be covered in a qualified health plan from each of the ten essential health benefits categories. For example, all qualified plans must offer covered services in the maternity benefits category.
Pregnancy
Obamacare covers pregnancy and childbirth. Pregnancy is not a disqualifying pre-condition, insurers can no longer deny coverage to pregnant women. Services before and after the birth are essential health benefits included in every qualified health plan. The required summary of benefits spells out the coverage of pregnancy and maternity care both before and after childbirth. The results of childbirth include the below-listed items.
- Childbirth creates a Life Event enrollment period
- After childbirth, women can keep an existing plan and add the child
- Childbirth creates option, women can change to a different Obamacare plan
Preventive Services are Vital to Health and Wellness
Available without cost sharing, essential preventive care marks a major advance towards better health for women. These include immunizations, lab work, screenings, and tests. Wellness is a vital part of women’s health services; it is an important assessment and a structure of health practices that help avoid illnesses. There is simply no better way to be healthy than to maintain health rather than heal sicknesses.
Smoking Cessation
The incidence of tobacco usage favored women over men for many decades; it is no longer true as the incidence of tobacco usage is essentially the same for both sexes. The incidence of smoking-related disease and illness is also a factor for women’s health. Smoking cessation is an important benefit of Obamacare health plans. It has the potential to save thousands of lives and improve the health of millions of women.
Benefits of Smoking Cessation
Like screenings, physical exams, and wellness assessments, smoking cessation has immediate tangible health benefits. Brain, lung, and heart functions improve when people stop smoking. Blood and immune systems regain powerful abilities to carry oxygen throughout the body and to resist infection and diseases. Bones and muscles improve remarkably when women stop smoking. Muscles respond better when oxygen and blood flow improve. Bones are critical to long-term health. Women will have stronger bones longer when they stop smoking. Smoking interferes with the development of bone material and reduces bone density.
The Deductible Barrier to Good Health
Prior to the Affordable Care Act, much of women’s health and wellness were victims of high deductibles. Insurers routinely imposed high deductibles on women applicants that they accepted.
It is worth noting that they frequently denied coverage to women who were or had been pregnant as pre-existing conditions.
Preventive health procedures save money and reduce the national health care bill. Not only does it make good economic sense, but also reducing the costs in human suffering by early detection of severe disease and serious conditions are a major advance of the Affordable Care Act.
Women’s Healthcare Under Obamacare is Robust
Preventive care and powerful screening and diagnostic tools have added important health benefits for women. Maternity benefits and services without annual or lifetime limits give women improved opportunities for long-term health. Wellness programs can help reinforce good health with lifestyle and preventive practices. Comparison shopping is the best way for an individual or family to determine the best choices for health care coverage. The technique focuses on the parts of the coverage that may be most important or most impactful. Customized insurance is not really possible, but finding the parts of a plan that matter most certainly is. Comparison shopping is the preferred tool for making insurance work for the individual or family. Start comparing health insurance rates now by entering your zip code in our FREE tool below!
