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Women's preventative health care expansion takes effect on Wednesday

Another major provision in the Affordable Care Act takes effect Wednesday: the expansion of women's access to preventative health care.

Another major provision in the Affordable Care Act takes effect Wednesday: the expansion of women's access to preventative health care. Women's health advocate Sandra Fluke penned a Tuesday column for Lean Forward explaining what the provision means for women's health care in the United States. On that night's edition of The Last Word, she told host Lawrence O'Donnell how she foresees the expansion affecting the popularity of the law overall.

She said, "I think that when Americans start to go to the doctor and see they can get access to these preventative services that they haven't had before ... they will realize that the Affordable Care Act provices real health benefits to all of us."


However, Fluke did not see public perception of the law changing significantly overnight. "This is going to be a gradual process," she said. Though the provision takes effect all at once, "for each individual woman, it will start as soon as her insurance is renewed and a new plan year starts, assuming that it's not a grandfathered plan. So we'll each discover this on our own sort of insurance timeline."

Fluke also recommended that women read the National Women's Law Center's guide on how to find out when the preventative care provision takes effect for individual plans.