Increasing Access to Voluntary Screening for HIV/AIDS and STIs Act of 2017
This bill amends title XVIII (Medicare) and title XIX (Medicaid) of the Social Security Act to require Medicare and state Medicaid programs to provide routine HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infection (STI) screening services. State Medicaid programs must provide these services without cost sharing for the screened individual.
The bill amends the Public Health Service Act, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), and the Internal Revenue Code to require group health plans and health insurers to provide coverage for routine HIV/AIDS and STI screening under no less favorable terms than other routine health screenings. The bill prohibits activities to avoid these requirements.
State Medicaid programs may receive enhanced federal matching funds for covering individuals with HIV/AIDS whose income and resources do not exceed the limits for disabled individuals.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) must track STI screening trends and other information regarding people with disabilities and women who have sex with women.
The CDC must work with others to: (1) make sex education materials accessible to the deaf and hearing loss community and to people with intellectual disabilities, (2) track access to women's health services for women with severe mobility impairments, (3) increase the number of people in public health careers who are deaf or living with hearing loss, (4) ensure that cervical cancer screening guidelines state that women who have sex with women should be subject to the same screening as women who have sex with men, and (5) improve information collection concerning STIs in transgender communities.