[Reblogged from sexoutloud.com]

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), otherwise known as “health care reform” and sometimes incorrectly referred to as “ObamaCare,” has already implemented major changes for U.S. residents. Regardless of your stance on employer-mandated health insurance, the ethics of contraception, or your own personal birth control use, many are waiting to find out: what exactly will health care reform do for birth control? The birth control overhaul is set to take place on August 1st, 2012. Will you or someone you know be in line for a shiny new IUD come August?

What will change on August 1st:

•  All FDA approved contraceptive methods must be covered under “preventive care” by new, private health insurance plans. This includes emergency contraception and sterilization procedures such as tubal ligation.
• Co-payments, co-insurance, and deductibles will be be a thing of the past for preventative services under covered health insurance plans. In other words, preventative services (including contraception) will be available at no cost to the insured.

Here’s what won’t happen on August 1st:

• Ru-486 (otherwise known as the abortion pill or medical abortion) will not be required to be covered by insurance.
• Millions of women who use Medicaid as their primary source of health insurance will have to wait until January 1st, 2013, when preventive services under Medicaid expands.
• Health care plans that were in effect before the Affordable Care Act was signed into law will not be required to adopt the new provisions. So if you or your parents purchased your plan before March 23rd, 2010, you won’t see an expansion of birth control coverage. Fortunately, most of these plans already cover some portion of birth control.

Questions that still remain (What we don’t know)

• Will the cost of insertion and removal of certain methods (such as the IUD and Implanon) be covered under new health insurance plans?
• While most current employer-sponsored health insurance companies provide at least some coverage for birth control pills, the plethora of birth control options are not necessarily available to currently insured women. For plans in place before March 23rd, 2010, will health care reform provisions eventually mandate these plans to “catch up”?
• Will the premium costs of all health insurance owners go up? Some say it will, but White House spokespeople (and some insurance company representatives) say this is unlikely. Private health insurance companies will ultimately get to set those prices.