Clustering affordable care act qualified health plans to understand how and where insurance facilitates or impedes access to HIV prevention

Insurance plan design is complex. To address the ambitious call to end the HIV epidemic in this country, plans should also take into account both public health and health equity factors to create plan designs that ensure access to critical preventive services for people who need them most. Addressing the growing disparities in PrEP access along racial and ethnic lines should be a national priority, and federal and state insurance regulators as well as insurance plans themselves should be part of the conversation about how to ensure people who would benefit from PrEP can access it. Better state/federal regulation of plan design to ensure access is consistent, equitable, and based on clinical recommendations will reduce the variability across plan designs.