One in 10 nonprofit organizations with at least 1,000 workers sought an accommodation to not provide Affordable Care Act–required contraceptive coverage to their employees, but instead allow workers to access the copay-free coverage separately, according to new research from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The findings “indicate that a minority of nonprofits have elected an accommodation to the contraceptive coverage requirement,” according to survey results published Dec. 1.
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Certain religious-affiliated organizations object to providing health care coverage for contraceptive services, and the Supreme Court ruled in the Hobby Lobby v. Burwell case that certain closely held companies could be excepted from providing coverage if doing so violated their religious beliefs. In November 2015, the Supreme Court agreed to hear another case – this one brought by nonprofit, religiously affiliated groups seeking to be exempt from the mandate.
“For workers and their dependents, the distinction between an accommodation and an exemption is the difference between guaranteed no-cost contraceptive coverage and having to pay out of pocket for services that could potentially exceed hundreds of dollars a year,” Laurie Sobel, a KFF senior policy analyst, and her colleagues said in the survey report.
The report notes that the government does not collect uniform information on whether a nonprofit has a religious affiliation, but adds that religion does not need to be a primary focus of the organization to be eligible for the accommodation.
According to the survey results, 3% of all nonprofits with at least 10 workers sought some kind of accommodation. For the smallest of organizations (10-199 workers), the accommodation request rate was 2%, while 5% of organizations with 200-999 workers requested an accommodation.
Most nonprofits affiliated with the Catholic Church are likely among those seeking the accommodation due to the church’s objection to birth control, according to the report, which noted that in 2011, 10% of all nonprofit hospitals were Catholic hospitals and 10 of the 25 largest health systems in the United States were nonprofit Catholic-sponsored systems. Additionally, 260 of the approximately 1,700 private nonprofit colleges and universities have Catholic affiliations.