If Viagra Is Covered, Why Not The Pill?

If so many health insurance plans are paying for that little blue pill known as Viagra, why can't more of them start paying for THE pill as well?

Supporters of legislation to do just that posed the question Tuesday to members of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, which held a hearing on the issue.

About half of all health care plans do not routinely cover prescription contraceptives, said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, the bill's primary sponsor. That fact alone contributes to higher out-of-pocket health care expenses for women, 68 percent higher than those for men.

"Some women will forgo the use of contraceptives because they simply can't pay for them, and the result will be an unintended pregnancy, leading to a potential lack of prenatal care or even abortion," Snowe said.

Under the bill known as Equity in Prescription Insurance and Contraceptive Coverage Act, or EPICC, health insurance plans that cover prescription drugs would also have to pay for birth control. All five methods of prescription contraception would be covered: the pill, Depo-Provera, Norplant, diaphragm and intrauterine devices.

The hearing comes a week after the House approved a similar measure affecting health care plans for federal employees.

Snowe said it makes no sense for insurance plans to pay for abortions and sterilizations yet refuse to cover birth control.

"How can we have come so far in bringing issues of inequality in rights, research and health care for women to light, yet this issue remains in the shadow?" she said.

Committee chairman Jim Jeffords, R-Vt., said the bill ensures gender equity.

"It is disturbing how rapidly some insurance plans began covering Viagra when it has taken so long for many of them to begin covering contraceptives," he said.

Jeffords said he invited representatives of the insurance industry to testify about the bill but they declined.

Opponents to similar measures have argued that the requirement amounts to another federal mandate, one that would be too costly to implement.

That argument "just can't pass the straight face test," Snowe said.

"All methods of contraceptives are cost-effective when compared to the cost of an unintended pregnancy," she said.

Snowe plans to bring her bill before the full Senate for debate within the next few weeks by attaching it to an appropriations measure.

Attention to insurance coverage of contraceptives has been heightened because of the focus over Viagra, the male impotence bill. Quoting a Kaiser Family Foundation survey taken in May, Jeffords said that 75 percent of those surveyed supported the coverage of contraception, but only 49 percent supported coverage of Viagra.

Written by Eun-Kyung Kim