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American Morning

Should Female Contraceptive Measures Be Covered in a Health Plan

Aired September 10, 2001 - 11:24   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: If your health insurance covers viagra prescriptions, should it also cover the pill? That question is at the core of a Senate hearing this afternoon.

Members will hear the pros and cons of adding female contraceptive coverage to health plans. Let's get a preview, of sorts, of that debate. CNN's Jeanne Meserve joins us now from Capitol Hill. Good morning, Jeanne.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Leon. About one third of American woman rely on some form of prescriptive contraceptives, however not all health plans will cover the cost, although they do cover an array other prescription drugs, including, as you mentioned, in some viagra.

The perception of inequity has led to proposed federal legislation. There will be a hearing on that this afternoon, but we're going to discuss the pros and cons right now with Kate Sullivan of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Thanks you both for coming in today.

Kate, let me start with you. There is a perception here that there's an inequity between what's covered for men and what's covered for women. Is that perception real?

KATE SULLIVAN, U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE: The reality is that most workers do have access to some sort of health plan that does cover a range of preventative benefits, and benefits that are not medically required.

Traditionally, that's always been your fee for service, the freedom -- the open network plans, where you're covered for your big medical expenses, but not necessarily all the preventative benefits. It's been the mass care plans, the HMO plans, that have been much more proactive in covering at least some form of prescription birth control for woman.

MESERVE: Gloria, should there be more coverage than there is presently for contraceptive services?

GLORIA FELDT, PRES., PLANNED PARENTHOOD: Contraceptive is just basic essential women's health care. About 90 percent of us use it at some time in our lives to plan and space our child baring, to stay healthy. It's basic, it's essential. It's also only fair, because prescriptions for other drugs are covered.

Prescription for contraception, which sometimes is the most frequently used prescription a woman has, should absolutely be covered by insurance plan.

MESERVE: Would this be expensive?

FELDT: No, as a matter of fact, if you think about it, it just makes common sense that it would save money. The federal employees have been covered now for the last three years. And an audit of their plan found that it cost no more money; and just more recently than that, the Washington-based Business Health Group found that it may cost up to 15 to 17 percent more not to cover contraception than to cover it. It saves money to prevent unintended pregnancies.

MESERVE: OK. I have to believe that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has probably worked these numbers. Do you have a price tag on what it would cost to cover contraceptive services?

SULLIVAN: It really depends on the employer and the employer group. How many women of child baring age do they have that are actually using prescription contraception. A number of women don't use prescriptive contraception, and men of course don't have access to those as well.

MESERVE: So, you don't have a number?

SULLIVAN: We don't have a number. But it really is, I think, sort of a fallacy to believe that women would go ahead and have children because they don't have coverage. Women do take responsible for their lives.

But, the bigger concern here is that 40 million Americans have no health plan at all, and these costs are rising apart from these mandates. That is really the concern, that some women are going to lose their coverage entirely, and not be able to continue to afford to participate in their employer plan.

MESERVE: Gloria, do you feel that is a real risk, or is that a scare tactic?

FELDT: Oh, it's just a scare tactic. Of course, everyone should have access to health care coverage, Planned Parenthood would be the first to support that. But, within any health care coverage, contraceptives should be covered because they are basic, because it's a fundamental gender equity issue, because women today spend 68 percent more than men out of pocket for their basic preventative health care. And a big portion of that is because we have to pay for contraceptives out of our own pocket.

So, it's just not fair, and we need to bring fairness and equity to this.

MESERVE: Karen, could you respond to Gloria's argument that in the long run this could be more expensive for businesses not to cover contraception because you have the cost of pregnancy, of delivery, maternity leave and so forth.

SULLIVAN: Certainly those are costs, and that really does, again, depends on the particular employer and the benefits they do provide for all of their working women.

It really does -- we are dealing here with a big increase in employer health plan costs, and we're looking at further costs because of the big expansion in mental health benefits, just passed by the Senate Health Committee last month, as well as the Patient's Bill of Rights.

Employers have been relying...

FELDT: None of that is because of contraception.

SULLIVAN: It's been because of overall -- actually, rising prescription drug cost is another big driver of medical inflation. And many employers are increasing their co-payments prescription drugs to about 25 to $30 per prescription, which is also the cost of many oral contraceptives.

MESERVE: Let me ask you both about whether the inevitability of this. There has now been a court decision in the state of Washington, in which a drugstore chain was told it had to provide oral contraceptives for its employees. The EEOC has issued some statements about this.

Kate, is it inevitable? Eventually is this going to happen, whether you want it to or not?

SULLIVAN: We really do encourage everybody, and in fact Planned Parenthood's own web site encourages employees that don't have this coverage to go first to their employers and say this important to me. It's much more expedient to do that than to call your member of Congress and wait for Congress to pass a bill.

And if this something that's really important to employees, they need to let their employer know that.

MESERVE: We have to leave it there, unfortunately. Gloria Feldt and Kate Sullivan, thank you both for joining us for this debate, which will continue on Capitol Hill this afternoon when there's a hearing on this very matter.

Colleen and Leon, back to you.

HARRIS: All right, thanks, Jeanne. We'll see you in a bit.

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