Source: TEK IMAGE / Getty
As testament to the success of the GOP-debated, Supreme Court upheld Affordable Care Act, an analysis published Tuesday reveals that women have saved $1.4 billion on birth control pills since the mandate for insurance companies to cover the contraception went into effect three years ago.
The numbers, detailed by Health Affairs and reported by the Huffington Post, also show that out-of-pocket spending on intrauterine devices fell 68 percent.
“Annual out-of-pocket savings were $248 for IUDs and $255 annually for oral contraceptives,” the Post writes. The decrease in numbers, the site points out, is stunning.
The Health Affairs report found that in the six months leading up to the birth control mandate, pill users spent an average of $32.74 per prescription, with that number falling to $20.37. Average spending on IUDs fell from $262.38 to $84.30.
“It turns out the law is doing exactly what the law says should be done,” said the lead author of the report, Nora Becker, according to Newsweek. “I was surprised by the speed at which we’ve seen a drop in price.”
The authors of the report used a claims database from a national insurer to determine just how much money women have saved over the three years.
“We found that mean and median per prescription out-of-pocket expenses have decreased for almost all reversible contraceptive methods on the market. The average percentages of out-of-pocket spending for oral contraceptive pill prescriptions and intrauterine device insertions by women using those methods both dropped by 20 percentage points after implementation of the ACA mandate,” Becker wrote. “We estimated average out-of-pocket savings per contraceptive user to be $248 for the intrauterine device and $255 annually for the oral contraceptive pill. Our results suggest that the mandate has led to large reductions in total out-of-pocket spending on contraceptives and that these price changes are likely to be salient for women with private health insurance.”
For more on the report, see here.
SOURCE: Health Affairs, Huffington Post | PHOTO CREDIT: Getty
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