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Reminder: Contraceptive coverage update for religious organizations

July 1, 2014

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,also known as Health Care Reform, requires nongrandfatheredhealth plans to cover contraceptiveservices for women with no out-of-pocket costs(i.e., $0 cost-sharing). There are two exceptions to thisrequirement:

  • Religious employer exemption. Religious employerscan elect not to provide contraceptive coverage, andtheir employees are not eligible for contraceptivecoverage.
  • Non-profit religious organization. Non-profitreligious organizations can elect not to covercontraceptives for religious reasons but are notexempt as a "religious employer."
    For these non-profit religious organizations, HealthCare Reform requires IBC to pay the cost of certaincontraceptive services for eligible employeesand eligible dependents of non-profit religiousorganizations that elect not to cover contraceptives.

Eligible members within these organizations will receivea separate ID card that indicates ?ContraceptiveCoverage.? Using this ID card, contraceptive methodsapproved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administrationwill be covered at an in-network level with no costsharingunder the medical benefit and covered with nocost-sharing for generic products and for those brandproducts for which we do not have a generic equivalentunder the pharmacy benefit at retail and mail orderpharmacies.*

For these members, it is important that onlycontraceptive services be billed using the ID number onthe Contraceptive Coverage ID card.*

For a complete listing of medical contraceptive services,please refer to the current version of Medical Policy#00.06.02: Preventive Care Services.

Please contact your Network Coordinator if you haveany questions about this coverage or billing.

Contraceptive Coverage ID card samples

IBC Medical and Rx Contraceptive Coverage

*Contraceptive services are covered under the pharmacy benefit only ifthe member has an IBC prescription drug plan.


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