Interactive Quiz: How the Affordable Care Act Benefits Women

Correct Answer: 19 million

Due largely to the high cost of health coverage, especially for women without access to employer-based coverage, 19 million American women between the ages of 18 and 64 were uninsured in 2011. Uninsured women receive lower-quality care, and they generally have poorer health outcomes than insured women. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, however, women’s access to high-quality affordable health care will increase dramatically, as key reforms are implemented and the country moves toward near-universal health coverage. For more information on women’s health insurance coverage, see the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Correct Answer: True

More than half of American women report delaying needed medical care because of cost, and one-third of women report giving up basic necessities such as food, heat, or rent to pay for health care. For more information on how the Affordable Care Act eliminates cost burdens for women and protects them from medical bankruptcy, see this fact sheet from the White House.

Correct Answer: Up to 150 percent more

Before the Affordable Care Act, women were often charged much more for their health insurance coverage solely because of their gender—a practice known as gender rating. Indeed, women still pay $1 billion more than men each year in health insurance premiums for the same benefits. The Affordable Care Act changes that by ending insurers’ gender discrimination and making sure that women have equal access to the care they need. See this fact sheet from the White House and report from the National Women’s Law Center.

Correct Answer: All of the above

The Affordable Care Act enacts a series of crucial reforms that will vastly improve the quality of care for women and their families while also reducing the financial burden of health care. The Affordable Care Act ends some of the insurance industry’s most brutal practices such as dropping people from insurance plans when they get sick and refusing to cover maternity benefits in 87 percent of individual market plans. It also implements reforms that reduce the cost of health care for everyone. For a list of the top five ways health reform is helping women and families, see this column from the Center for American Progress.

Correct Answer: True

Before the Affordable Care Act was passed, it was legal to deny children coverage because of a pre-existing health condition—even if they were born with it. Now, under the health care law, plans that cover children can no longer exclude, limit, or deny coverage to a child under age 19 solely based on a health problem or disability that the child developed before a parent applied for coverage. This rule applies to all job-related health plans as well as individual health insurance policies issued after March 23, 2010. Young adults can also stay on their parent’s policy until they are 26 years old. For more information see Healthcare.gov.

Correct Answer: All of the above

Prior to the Affordable Care Act, women with conditions such as breast cancer or those who had ever had a Caesarean section could be denied needed coverage because of those conditions. Even sexual assault and domestic violence were sometimes categorized as pre-existing conditions. But as of 2014 it will no longer be legal to deny women coverage because of a pre-existing condition, thanks to the Affordable Care Act. See the National Women’s Law Center, "Still Nowhere to Turn: Insurance Companies Treat Women Like a Pre-Existing Condition."

Correct Answer: Contraception

The provisions of the Affordable Care Act that cover services to help prevent people from becoming sick currently include mammograms for women over 40, pap smears, blood pressure and obesity screening, depression screening for adolescents and adults, smoking and alcohol cessation programs for adults, and a wide range of prenatal screenings and tests. Beginning in August 2012 that list will be expanded to include all FDA-approved methods of contraception and sterilization, as well as annual well-woman visits, lactation consultation and supplies, screening and counseling for interpersonal and domestic violence, screening for gestational diabetes, DNA testing for the human papillomavirus for women 30 and older, counseling for sexually transmitted infections, and counseling and screening for HIV. For more information see Healthcare.gov.

Correct Answer: More than 20 million

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, Americans who are joining a new health plan, as well as Medicare beneficiaries, can receive recommended preventive services such as mammograms, pap smears, new baby care, and well-child visits without a co-pay, deductible, or any other out-of-pocket cost-sharing expenses. By February 2012, 20.4 million women between 18 and 64 in private plans had already taken advantage of this new provision of the health care law. For more information see Healthcare.gov.

Correct Answer: False

Nonprofit religious employers that object to birth control and are not already covering it will not have to include contraception coverage in their plans. Instead, women who work for an objecting employer will be able to obtain contraception coverage directly from their insurance company. Despite this accommodation, conservative lawmakers are still fighting hard to deny women access to this basic aspect of their health care. For more information see the recent columns from the Center for American Progress about why contraception coverage is important for women’s preventive care and how the administration’s policy on contraception actually strengthens religious liberty.

Correct Answer: $1,210 per year

Many people seem to think birth control is affordable, but high costs are one of the primary barriers to contraceptive access. Between the cost of the monthly supply of oral contraceptives and the cost of the doctors’ visits needed to have an exam and obtain a prescription, women’s out-of-pocket costs for oral contraceptives range between $215 and $1,210 per year depending on their insurance coverage. For more information about the cost of the most common family planning methods, see the Center for American Progress fact sheet on the high costs of birth control.