Sen. Barbara Mikulski joined a bipartisan effort to introduce an amendment to the Senate’s proposed health care reform bill, requiring all health plans to cover women’s preventive care, including mammograms and cervical cancer screenings.

Barbara Mikulski

Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat, joined Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), the only Republican to vote for Sen. Max Baucus’ (D-Mont.) Senate Finance Committee version of health care reform legislation, to file the amendment. Debate on the amendment was occur today (Dec. 1).

The senators want to ensure that women in their 40s have access to mammograms and other screenings covered by insurance in the wake of a recommendation last week by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF).

The advisory group recommended that women need only obtain breast and cervical cancer screening recommendations starting in their 50s, not the 40s. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the amendment would cost $940 million over 10 years.

The amendment would prevent insurance companies from making the services “so expensive women can’t afford them,” according to a statement from the National Organization for Women, a nonprofit women’s advocacy group.

“With its discriminatory history of denying coverage for various forms of women’s health care, it’s not a stretch to foresee our profit-driven insurance industry electing not to cover mammograms for women in their 40′s based on the USPSTF’s new recommendations,” the NOW statement said.

To become law, Mikulski’s amendment must obtain full Senate approval, then the approval of the House and President Barack Obama, as part of the final health care reform legislation.