The Supreme Court rejected this Friday an attempt to reverse a section of the affordable health law (nicknamed Obamacare) that allows a panel of specialists to recommend preventive care services that insurers must then offer at no additional cost for patients.
These medications or services include statins to reduce high cholesterol, reviews to detect lung cancer, mammography to reduce the incidence of breast cancer, or pills that help prevent HIV.
The demand questioned the constitutionality of how the panel of specialists is appointed that determines what preventive care will be covered. Panel experts are usually appointed directly by the Department of Health, when in other cases similar positions must be confirmed by the Senate.
Before Obamacare was approved, panel decisions were not mandatory; Now they are.
(Health cuts in Trump’s fiscal plan can cause up to $ 22,800 in medical debts for some families)
The demand was imposed by a group of Christian employers from the Braidwood Management group and the Kelley Orthodontics company, which objected to religious issues to the obligation that private medical insurance accessible through an employer covers access to medications that prevent HIV called PREP.
According to the plaintiffs, their religious rights were broken by this matter that allegedly “facilitates homosexual behavior, drug use and sexual activity outside the marriage between a man and a woman.”
HIV can affect people of any sexual orientation and even babies through issues such as blood transfusions. PREP reduces up to 99% the possibility of contracting the human immunodeficiency virus, which can otherwise trigger AIDS.
(RF Kennedy Jr. Advisors support flu vaccination in general but do not recommend certain vaccines)
The case in front of the Supreme Court was only on the appointment of the panel that determines what preventive care should be covered, not what types of care have to assume insurers in their policies.
