Champaign County Health Care Consumers (CCHCC) joins individuals and organizations across the country today in celebrating new provisions that provide women with access to preventive care that took effect August 1, under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, or national health reform).

Please see the email below from Families USA for more information!

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From Families USA
http://www.familiesusa.org/
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Being a woman just got a little easier.

Starting today, new and renewing health plans will be required to provide
women access to eight prevention-related health services without paying
more out of their own pocket. After August 1, new health plans must
include:

 * an annual well woman visit,

 * birth control, including oral contraception and IUDs,

 * HIV screening and counseling,

 * sexually transmitted infection counseling,

 * screening for gestational diabetes,

 * breastfeeding consultation and supplies, including breast pumps, and

 * screening and counseling for domestic violence.

Before today, some insurance companies did not cover these preventive
services for women at all, while those lucky enough to have them included
in their health care plan still had to pay deductibles or copays for the
care.

With these new preventive services in place, millions of women will be
able to get the care and services they need to lead healthy lives and to
prevent disease. And the help could not come soon enough as almost 37
million non-elderly women in the United States have been diagnosed with a
pre-existing condition—conditions that could have been avoided if they had
easier access to preventive care.

The Affordable Care Act is one of the greatest victories for women’s
rights in decades. It will end discrimination by insurance companies based
on gender and make sure women have access to quality, affordable health
care. But it will only work if the women who stand to benefit from these
new protections know about them.

Please help spread the word! Use our new fact sheet on women and the
Affordable Care Act to explain to your communities just what they stand to
gain, use the hashtags #worrynomore and #Aug1 when tweeting about these new
benefits, and share our infographics on Pinterest (http://pinterest.com).

You can download the new fact sheet (pdf) at:
http://fusa.convio.net/site/R?i=R_ePMEIU4vgrp31JWup4mA

Being a woman just got a little easier — thanks Obamacare!