Obama Rewrites Obamacare Again and Forces Insurers to Pay for Birth Control

So much for that rule of law and freedom of conscience thing:

WashingtonTimes: reports the Obama administration on Monday ordered all insurers to provide IUDs, the contraceptive patch and other birth control free of out-of-pocket charge to all women, rewriting the rules after reports that some insurance carriers were refusing to cover all types of contraceptives.

Insurers must cover at least one brand of contraception in each of 18 different methods outlined by the Food and Drug Administration, such as oral contraceptive pills, the emergency contraceptive morning-after pill and intrauterine devices.

Insurers can in some cases still impose costs to prod women to use generics rather than brand-name drugs, under the new guidance — but if a doctor or hospital recommends a particular drug or contraceptive device out of medical necessity, the plans must cover them without additional cost.

The contraceptive coverage provisions were some of the most controversial of the Affordable Care Act. They were supposed to give women free access to birth control, but some insurers were refusing to fully cover all types of contraceptives, meaning women who wanted a particular form of birth control had to pay some or all of the costs, the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation and other groups said in recent studies.

“Today, we are clarifying these coverage requirements,” HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said in releasing the new rules.