What medical services does Obamacare cover?

Hospital care, doctor visits, and birth control are all on the list.

By Sarah Kliff Updated Jan 5, 2017, 2:33pm EST

doctors around patient — ((Shutterstock))

Part of Everything you need to know about Obamacare

All Obamacare-compliant health care plans have to cover 10 basic categories of medical services. This includes things like trips to the hospital, prescription drugs, and mental health care (read a full list here). But there’s no big, government-provided list of each type of service an insurer needs to cover — instead, states have oversight to make sure that each plan covers the 10 categories adequately.

More broadly, Obamacare covers catastrophes. The law doesn’t allow health plans to set annual limits on how much they will spend on your medical care. This means if something horrible happens of the hit-by-a-bus magnitude, the insurer will be on the hook for some very big medical bills.

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