Women's access to preventive health care services - Aug 1, 2012

This is an important day for women across this great country. Starting today, all new health insurance plans will include coverage for important preventive health care for women. Many have looked forward to this date since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and I'm thrilled that it's finally here.

Starting today, women across the country will have access to essential preventive health care without copayments or deductibles. Women who were effectively barred from these services because of the cost will now be able to receive annual visits, testing for diseases like HPV and HIV, breast feeding support and education, domestic violence counseling, and contraceptives.

This is an important step in lowering our country's health care costs and making sure that women have sufficient access to preventive health care.

In my home State of Oregon, there are more than 633,000--and 47 million across the country--who are going to benefit from this change. These are women who had unintended pregnancies because they couldn't access contraceptives. These are women who avoided going to the doctor because they didn't have the money, only to end up in the emergency room. And these are women whose pregnancies were endangered because of lack of prenatal care. Today this changes. Now all women can take control of their health.