An amendment to the Senate health care bill, sponsored by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), became the first amendment voted on in the Senate.
Mikulski’s amendment requires insurers to cover preventive care and screenings for women, at no cost to the patient. The amendment passed 60 to 39.
Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) attached a secondary amendment to Mikulski’s last night, which states that new mammogram guidelines released this year by the U.S Preventive Service Task Force cannot prevent women from receiving mammograms.
Mikulski’s amendment relies on guidelines from the Health Resources and Services
Administration, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, to determine which services are covered.
Late update: The Senate just defeated the second amendment, this one introduced by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), voting 59 to 41.
Murkowski’s amendment would have prevented the HHS from using guidelines from the Preventive Service Task Force to deny preventive service including mammograms. It would also prohibit the government from defining abortion as a preventive service.
