With millions of people across the country looking at the Affordable Care Acts health exchange, the federal Health and Human Services secretary wants women to know what is and should be available to them.

As National Breast Cancer Awareness month comes to a close, Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, posted a blog entry Thursday about how the Affordable Care Act affects womens health coverage. While the act and the health exchange aim to offer low-cost insurance options for people, Sebelius said the act has already started offering ways for women in the country to receive

preventative screenings and counseling.

Though the health exchanges insurance wont be effective until next year for those who enroll now, the act, which was passed in 2010, has already affected parts of the health care industry. For womens health, one part of the act began in Aug. 1, 2012, to give women free access to a large number of preventative services.

According to the Health and Human Services site, the 22 covered preventative services for women are screenings for anemia, bacteriuria, gestational diabetes, Hepatitis B and Rh incompatibility for pregnant women; screenings for breast cancer, cervical cancer, chlamydia infection, domestic violence, gonorrhea, HIV, osteoporosis, tobacco use and syphilis for all women; counseling for BRCA, breast cancer chemoprevention, breastfeeding, domestic violence, tobacco use and sexually transmitted infections; access to contraception and folic acid supplements; and annual well-woman visits.

Since 2010, women can also receive mammograms and colonoscopies that are completely covered by insurance companies.

These preventive services are critical to keeping women healthy, Sebelius said in her blog post. For example, breast cancer is the most common cancer affecting women and the second leading cause of cancer death for women in the U.S., after lung cancer. But when breast cancer is caught early and treated, survival rates can be near 100 percent.

We believe that the health plan coverage guidelines as developed by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) will help ensure that the women in our service area will receive a comprehensive set of preventative services without regard to their ability to pay for such services, said Rich Newell, CEO of Carlisle Regional Medical Center.

Screening concerns

Dr. Peter Cardinal, medical director of Holy Spirit Health Systems outpatient offices, said having such coverage will help prevent higher costs later on, but he added that theres a caveat to the free access to screenings. As good as it is to offer them, he said a patient needs a physician to guide them through the screening and talk about whether or not a screening is needed.

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Health Care Checkup: Preventive services already available to women