From the Daily: Unsafe pricing

By The Michigan Daily  On  September 10th, 2008

After a summer of rising gasoline and food prices, students can add one more essential to the list of increasingly unaffordable products: birth control. Despite a concerted prevention effort, the price of a popular birth control pill doubled at the University Health Service recently, just in time for a new school year. Now, many students must choose whether to shoulder the extra cost, switch to a cheaper alternative or abandon the pill altogether. This is a choice women shouldn’t have to make and one Congress should ensure they don’t have to.

The Deficit Reduction Act, which went into effect in January 2007, restricts pharmaceutical companies from reducing the price of prescriptions for certain buyers, including universities. Before the law went into effect, UHS stockpiled prescriptions in an effort to keep prices low. But its supply has finally run out, prompting a price hike. Notably affected by this hike is the popular birth control pill Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo, which now costs a whopping $50 for a one-month supply — more than twice what it cost at UHS before.

Luckily, coughing up the extra $29 each month for the pill isn’t the only option. Students who want to continue using the pill but can’t afford Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo anymore can purchase a more affordable generic brand at most pharmacies. And affordable alternatives to the pill, including intrauterine devices, condoms and, yes, even abstinence, are also readily available.

But there’s a reason there are so many birth control options: No two women are the same. While many women use the pill simply as a preferred method of contraception, doctors also prescribe it to calm acne, regulate menstruation and even treat ovarian cysts. Further, birth control pill brands vary in components like hormones and dosage, which often makes finding the right prescription a difficult matter of trial-and-error. A pill that works for one woman may cause spotting, weight gain and depression in another.

Of course, the new price hike shouldn’t be a problem for students with health insurance — except that many plans exclude birth control from their coverage. Nationally, women pay more out of pocket on average than men for birth control and reproductive-related health care. And even more questionably, many plans cover the cost of drugs like Viagra while neglecting to cover contraceptives like the birth control pill.

If we hope to foster a safe sexual atmosphere in this country, and especially on college campuses, women need the full range of birth control options — and they need them at affordable prices.
When Sen. Barack Obama (D–Ill.) and Rep. Joseph Crowley (D–N.Y.) introduced the Prevention Through Affordable Access Act in their respective chambers last November, they recognized this need. The bill, designed to provide more affordable birth control to college health clinics, has not yet passed. Even if it had, it probably didn’t stand much chance of getting past President Bush, who seems unwilling to face the fact that teenagers are going to have sex, one way or the other.

Teenagers and college students are having sex, and more expensive birth control isn’t going to change that. We should be making sure that are doing it responsibly and providing them with the tools to do so.

Printed from www.michigandaily.com on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:33:52 -0400