New Orleans court rules 8 employers cannot be forced to provide no-cost coverage for select preventative care like HIV prep [Video]

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana — Employers who challenged some federal health insurance requirements cannot be forced to provide no-cost coverage for certain types of preventive care, including HIV prep and some kinds of cancer screenings, a federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled Friday.

The video above is from ABC13’s live-streaming channel.

The ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is narrow, applying only to the eight employers who objected to providing the coverage. The conservative court declined to make the ruling apply nationwide.

“While we were predicting the worst, at the moment insurers will still have to cover preventive services, including PrEP, except for the original plaintiffs. That is the good news,” Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute, said in an email, referring to a common HIV preventative treatment. But, Schmid lamented that the court found that the coverage requirement for HIV prevention was adopted in violation of the Constitution, and that the case is going back …