I’m thrilled to start this new year celebrating a new law that will help my patients and all pregnant people in Maine access care they need, when they need it.
Maine lawmakers passed L.D. 935, An Act to Remove Barriers to Abortion Coverage in Private Insurance, last legislative session, along with several other important bills that protect and expand access to abortion and related care. The majority of these bills became law last fall, while L.D. 935 takes effect Jan. 1. This law addresses financial barriers to accessing time-sensitive abortion care for many patients. L.D. 935 prohibits insurance companies from requiring patients to meet deductibles or other cost-sharing measures before abortion care is paid for by insurance plans.
In 2019, Maine lawmakers passed legislation requiring insurance to cover abortion care, an essential part of comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care. But as anyone with health insurance can attest, deductibles – which can come to several thousand dollars – and other cost-sharing requirements, render “covered” care in name only. This means the costs of providing care to insured patients are shifted to health care providers, like Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, who are committed to providing care to all, regardless of ability to pay, and to charitable abortion funds that are essentially subsidizing the private insurance mandate.
People who use private insurance for abortion care could not access certain abortion funds to help cover costs because insurance contracts prohibited it. Even though they had coverage, these patients had to pay out of pocket for care, and some were forced to delay care while they saved or sourced funding they needed, pushing them further along in their pregnancies.
Few people have the savings to afford a medical emergency. For those in need of abortion care, those costs can mean a month’s rent, a car payment, or push them closer to poverty. Now that L.D. 935 is law in Maine, patients won’t have to worry how they’ll afford abortion care covered by their insurance.
As a practicing obstetrician and gynecologist, I have helped many patients navigate insurance policies and try to find ways to pay for care they need. This added burden and stress is unnecessary, and now, at least for abortion care, it is lessened.
It is important to note that L.D. 935 is not the end point. We still have work to do to ensure every Mainer can get the comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care they need.
Unfortunately, abortion and related care remain under attack across the country; Maine is not immune to those attacks. In fact, we have seen these attacks year after year, and year after year, I’ve signed on to testimony in favor of legislation that will help my patients and against legislation that would harm them.
My patients deserve the ability to access the care they need, when they need it. My patients and all Mainers deserve unrestricted access to birth control, and Mainers deserve to live in a state where funding for family planning services is prioritized, not pilloried. Mainers deserve to know their existing rights to reproductive autonomy will not change based on the whims of politicians.
This month will mark the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and we’re heading into the second year since the U.S. Supreme Court revoked Roe’s protections for abortion care. While other state lawmakers have enacted bans and other harmful policies, Maine lawmakers instead listened to patients, to providers like me, and to their constituents last session and passed legislation that will significantly improve Mainers’ ability to access abortion care.
In the coming legislative session, our lawmakers will consider a constitutional amendment to protect reproductive autonomy. I am hopeful that elected leaders will give voters, including health care providers like me, the opportunity to further safeguard rights and freedoms for all Mainers.
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