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Speaker Pelosi wears a MomsRising Pacifier pin showing she won't be pacified until health insurance reform is passed for children and families.

Without reform, the cost of health care for the average family of four is projected to rise $1,800 every year for years to come—and insurance companies will make more health care decisions. America’s Affordable Health Choices Act will eliminate co-pays and deductibles for recommended preventive services, such as early screenings, mammograms, well baby care, well child care, and maternity services.

In a 2008 report, the National Women’s Law Center found that the vast majority of individual market health insurance policies do not cover maternity at all. Even if a woman is not currently pregnant, it is unlikely that an insurer will provide or even offer maternity benefits as part of her regular insurance policy. Of the over 3,500 individual market insurance policies analyzed by the Center, just 12% included comprehensive maternity coverage and another 9% provided maternity coverage that was not comprehensive. There are only 14 states that currently require maternity coverage in policies sold on the individual market. America’s Affordable Health Choices Act includes coverage of maternity services as a benefit category in the essential benefits package that is outlined in the bill.

And in many cases, even those American women and their children who have health insurance do not receive key preventive care services – ranging from mammograms to well-baby and well-child care – because they cannot afford the co-pays required. For example, partly because of unaffordability, one in five women over the age of 50 nationwide has not received a mammogram in the past two years. America’s Affordable Health Choices Act makes preventive care more affordable by eliminating all co-pays and deductibles for recommended preventive services. This will be a particularly important provision to ensure that women and their children receive the preventive health care services that they need.