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Public programs and private health insurance now pay for the vast majority of contraceptive services and supplies for women. However, complex and shifting regulations shaped by state and federal policy, legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive coverage provision, and other factors affect the scope of coverage.
This budget analysis reviews U.S. funding for global health programs included in the fiscal year 2016 Budget Request released on February 2, 2015.
After Congress provided an unprecedented level of emergency funding for Ebola in FY15 in response to the West African outbreak, beyond regular appropriations for global health programs, FY16 returned to business as usual. There was no additional emergency funding and global health amounts remained essentially flat funding compared to prior years. The FY16 Omnibus Appropriations bill, which was signed into law by the President on December 18, 2015, included an estimated $10.2 billion in funding for global health programs continuing a trend of essentially flat funding since FY10.
On March 23, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Zubik v. Burwell, legal challenges brought by nonprofit corporations challenging the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive coverage requirement. The 2014 Hobby Lobby decision established that certain firms with religious beliefs should be relieved of the requirement of paying for contraceptive coverage. In this case, religious nonprofits are objecting to the regulations that the Obama Administration has developed to accommodate their religious objections to birth control, claiming it still burdens their religious beliefs. After the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, this already complicated case has taken on yet an additional question. Given that the Court will be operating with only 8 Justices, what would be the impact of a tie (4-4) decision? To address the legal and policy questions raised by the case, the Kaiser Family Foundation will hold an interactive web briefing exclusively for journalists.
In this post on The Huffington Post, Alina Salganicoff and Laurie Sobel offer a Q&A on “contraceptive-only” plans, an approach mentioned during oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court case Zubik v. Burwell. In the Zubik case, a group of religiously affiliated nonprofits with religious objections to providing birth control coverage seek an exemption from the Affordable Care Act's provision requiring most plans to offer such coverage without cost-sharing.
In this Medium post, Alina Salganicoff outlines the legal arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court case Zubik v. Burwell and discusses what the case could mean for contraceptive coverage.
The U.S. government has supported international family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) efforts for 50 years and is one of the largest donors to FP/RH in the world. This brief provides an overview of U.S. funding for FP/RH, including trends in bilateral and multilateral funding and top country recipients of U.S. funding, and places the U.S. within the larger context of overall donor support for the sector.
This issue brief explains the Affordable Care Act's current contraceptive coverage rule, the impact it has had on women, and the state of contraceptive coverage if the rule is eliminated or modified.
The Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive coverage provision made access to the full range of contraceptive methods available to millions of women with private insurance at no cost. Despite broad public support, this provision has been challenged by religious employers, with two cases reaching the Supreme Court.
This data note assesses how the Mexico City Policy affects the provision of legal abortion services in U.S. assisted countries. The policy requires foreign NGOs to certify that they will not “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning” using funds from any source (including non-U.S. funds) as a condition for receiving most U.S. government global health assistance.
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