Continue requiring insurance to cover birth control
Birth control and abortion
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
Insurers and employers choose what their health plans cover, so companies can keep contraception covered without any mandate. The mandate still matters for plans outside those choices, which keeps government in the picture. Investors already work this channel: proposals filed in 2023 asked UnitedHealth, Elevance Health and Humana to make enhanced contraceptive coverage, along with other reproductive health benefits, standard in every insurance tier where the law allows, and each proposal was withdrawn after engagement with the companies. The requirement's chief documented threat is not corporate lobbying but the courts: religious objectors won Supreme Court approval in July 2020 for broad religious and moral exemptions that no insurer's or employer's choices can undo.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Common Ground of the American People: Birth Control & Abortion, Program for Public Consultation / Voice of the People, survey July 2024
- Shareholders File Numerous Proposals Addressing Access to Reproductive Health Care for 2023 Proxy Ballots, Rhia Ventures, 2023-01
- Record Number of Proposals Address Threats to Reproductive Health Care, Proxy Preview, 2023
- Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration to Create Broad Religious Exemptions to ACA Birth Control Benefit, American Civil Liberties Union, 2020-07-08
1 campaign on record
Make broader contraceptive coverage, coverage of elective abortion and travel benefits for out of state care standard in every plan tier the law allows.
Result: Each of the three proposals was withdrawn after the filers talked with the companies.
we found no documented change
Record Number of Proposals Address Threats to Reproductive Health Care, Proxy Preview, 2023
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Common Ground of the American People's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.