Updating the Women’s Health Coverage Act
“Updating the Women’s Health Coverage Act” refers to the proposed Advancing Women’s Health Coverage Act (AWHCA), a bipartisan bill introduced in late 2025 to modernize the original1998 Women’s Health and Cancer Rights Act (WHCRA). It would expand coverage for breast reconstruction, addressing lymphedema, and ensuring access to all modern reconstructive options after mastectomy or lumpectomy, aligning federal law with current medical standards and closing insurance loopholes.
Insurance denials and delays for breast and chest wall reconstruction after cancer will become a thing of the past with passage of the Advancing Women’s Health Coverage Act (AWHCA). The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) and The Plastic Surgery Foundation (The PSF), together with bipartisan congressional champions Kat Cammack (R-FL), Debbie Dingell (D-MI), Beth Van Duyne (R-TX), Lucy McBath (D-GA), Ashley Hinson (R-IA), April McClain Delaney (D-MD), Young Kim (R-CA), Brittany Pettersen (D-CO), Laurel Lee (R-FL), Melanie Stansbury (D-NM), Celeste Maloy (R-UT) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA), as well as stakeholder advocacy groups such as Susan G. Komen, have teamed up to advance this legislation. The proposed bill strengthens the Women’s Health and Cancer Rights Act (WHCRA) from 1998 and closes insurance loopholes to ensure breast cancer patients can access comprehensive reconstructive care and choose the option that fits their goals, their lives and their bodies.