The Vermont House has given preliminary approval to a bill that expands access to long-acting contraception.
Lawmakers voted 128-15 on Wednesday to approve H.620. The House will decide Thursday whether to give the bill final approval before sending it over to the Senate.
The legislation codifies provisions of the federal Affordable Care Act that require insurance companies to cover every form of birth control with no copayment.
The bill goes a step further than federal law to require insurance companies to cover vasectomies for men with no cost sharing. That would mean the only remaining birth control method with out-of-pocket costs in Vermont would be condoms.
The bill also directs the Department of Vermont Health Access, which acts as the state’s insurer for Medicaid, to increase how much Medicaid pays doctors to insert long-acting birth control such as the contraceptive implant or intrauterine devices.
H.620 would increase the Medicaid reimbursement for inserting implants and IUDs by 10 percent. The bill then counts on savings by reducing unintended pregnancies by 5 percent. The cost of the bill is $38,864 in Medicaid money.
Rep. Kiah Morris, D-Bennington, who read the bill on the House floor, said the increased reimbursement rate would encourage more doctors to stock devices such as IUDs in their offices to allow women to have them inserted the same day they ask their doctor about it.
Morris said 46 percent of pregnancies in Vermont were unintended in 2010 and 50 percent in 2015. “Access to birth control is linked to increase in women’s wages, participation in the workforce and increased educational outcomes,” she said.
House Speaker Shap Smith, D-Morristown, applauded the vote in a statement. “At a time when some states are doing everything they can to restrict basic reproductive health measures, I am proud that the House is taking action to improve Vermont’s public health outcomes,” he said.
Rep. Janssen Willhoit, R-St. Johnsbury, voted against the bill. Willhoit said in an interview that he supports the bill but heard concerns from constituents who wanted an amendment to exempt houses of worship from having to provide methods such as vasectomies as part of their health insurance package.
