Dozens of health care plans offered through public insurance exchanges failed to meet coverage standards for women's health services established under the federal health care reform law, a new report has found.

In its review of 129 health care plans offered through public exchanges in 15 states during the 2014 and 2015 plan years, the Washington-based National Women's Law Center found that more than 50% violated at least one provision of the Affordable Care Act by excluding or limiting coverage for women's health services, including maternity care, prescription drugs, birth control and preventive physician visits.

“Insurance companies are breaking the law by denying women coverage to which they are entitled,” Gretchen Borchelt, the women's law center's vice president for health and reproductive rights, said Wednesday in a statement accompanying the report. “The Affordable Care Act has made dramatic improvements in women's health coverage, but insurers' failure to comply with its requirements has serious consequences that affect women every day. Insurance companies must comply with the law, and regulators should do a better job enforcing it.”

The report analyzed individual and small group plans offered through state-run public exchanges in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Maryland, Maine, Nevada and Washington, as well as plans offered through the federal exchange in Alabama, Florida, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wisconsin.

According to the report, 56 health plans offered in 13 states during the 2014 or 2015 plan years violated health care reform provisions regarding women's preventive services by imposing cost-sharing requirements, limiting coverage for “well-woman” physician visits and breastfeeding supplies and counseling, excluding required coverage for cancer screenings or failing to cover all FDA-approved types of birth control.

Additionally, 14 health care plans offered in seven states during the last two years violated the health care law's provisions regarding maternity care by excluding coverage for dependent enrollees, restricting pregnant women's access to maternity services outside of the plan's service area or imposing utilization limits on ultrasounds and other maternity care benefits.

All five of the largest publicly traded U.S. health insurers — UnitedHealth Group Inc., Anthem Inc., Aetna Inc., Cigna Corp. and Humana Inc. — were among the companies found to have offered noncompliant health plans through the public exchanges in 2014 and/or 2015.

The women's law center's report noted that many of the violations identified in plans offered in 2014 have since been corrected. The report identified 126 plans across 13 states in violation of the health care reform law in 2014 and 61 plans across eight states in violation of the law in 2015.

Among the 15 states identified in the report, Colorado and Ohio were found to have the most non-compliant plans offered through their exchanges in 2014 and 2015, respectively. The only state identified in the report without any non-compliant plans in its exchange in 2015 was Washington.