Birth control for free with Obamacare? Most women didn't know
A majority of women are unaware that birth control is available for free from health insurance plans under Obamacare—even as the Supreme Court is likely to soon consider legal fights over that law.
And while lack of awareness about the so-called "contraception mandate" might reflect overall, widespread confusion about Obamacare's details, an expert who has been following the issue said it also reflects the fact that pharmaceutical companies aren't advertising that their contraceptives could be effectively obtained free by many women.
Kristen McNeill has tracked women's knowledge of the contraception mandate for more than a year for her company, Phoenix Marketing International, which has a health-care division.
Three separate surveys by Phoenix this year found that fewer than 50 percent of women 18 to 45 knew that the Affordable Care Act requires health insurance plans to provide free contraceptives to women for birth control methods approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
The percentage of women who knew contraception such as birth-control pills, diaphragms, IUDs, vaginal rings and progestin injections would be free was 44 percent in the first three months of 2013, and 45 percent in April to June—a statistically insignificant difference, McNeill noted. Each survey questioned more than 3,000 women.
But a Phoenix survey done in the third quarter of this year found that awareness "is going up significantly," McNeill said.
http://www.today.com/money/birth-control-free-obamacare-most-women-didnt-know-2D11624208
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