Rick Thornton, an Arlington health insurance agent, said a judge recently ruled that an Affordable Care Act provision is now unconstitutional drastically alters previous options to cover critical HIV drugs for employees.
Health insurance in Arlington will undergo significant changes moving forward as U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled in favor of several businesses and individuals who wanted to deny free coverage of the HIV medication, PrEP on religious grounds, citing that deciding what insurance companies have to cover free-of-charge is unconstitutional. According to ABC News, the recent challenge and victory right now means that employers can no longer cover HIV drugs on their existing health plans. But it could also have far-reaching implications on other preventative healthcare such as colonoscopies, vaccines, etc., that up to this point have been covered at no cost with zero copays.
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The lawsuit argued that requiring companies to cover drugs could violate their religious freedom because having these drugs remain free of charge essentially endorses sexual activity outside of marriage among homosexual people, ABC News reiterated in a recent article. Judge O’Connor specified that he was siding with one company in particular, though the ruling undoubtedly creates a precedent that could pave the way for future lawsuits and impact individuals and families with health insurance in Arlington. PreP is said to be 90% effective in slowing the spread of HIV since it was made available roughly a decade ago.
Rick Thornton, an Arlington health insurance agent , said there have been similar challenges to contraceptive mandates on similar grounds in the past. The CDC wants more people to have access to PreP because of its high effective rate. Letting more people have access to it at no cost would increase the number of people who use it, though this latest ruling could be a massive setback in that effort. He pointed to a quote in the ABC News article that states, “… 140 million Americans rely and have come to enjoy, according to polls, the free preventive services, not just drugs and vaccines, but, you know, your annual physical that is supposed to be covered at no cost, no co-pay, once a year,” ABC News’ senior Washington reporter Devin Dwyer said. “That’s a benefit of ‘Obamacare.’ If that task force, that which sets those standards, is invalidated, all of that could potentially go away.”
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