- Kerri M. Raissian and Leonard M. Lopoo
- March 2014
- DP1421-14
- Link to dp142114 (PDF)
While recent national discussions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) made the introduction of mandated contraceptive coverage within health insurance policies seem like a novel idea, it is not new at all. Since the late 1990s, 29 states have mandated that insurance providers include prescription contraceptive supplies and/or services in their coverage. We use state-level policy variation to generate both difference-in-differences and triple difference estimates to determine if women in states with state-level contraception supply or contraception supply and services insurance mandates experienced changes in their utilization of contraception and preventive health care services. We do not find a relationship between these policies and contraception use; however, our results show an increase in the consumption of preventive health services as a result of these health insurance mandates.