Big Rise in Cost of Birth Control on Campuses

Big Rise in Cost of Birth Control on Campuses
Jodi Hilton for The New York Times

By MONICA DAVEY
Published: November 22, 2007


In health centers at hundreds of colleges and universities around the country, young women are paying sharply higher prices for prescription contraceptives because of a change in federal law.

The increases have meant that some students using popular birth control pills and other products are paying three and four times as much as they did several months ago. The higher prices have also affected about 400 community health centers nationwide used by poor women.

The change is due to a provision in a federal law that ended a practice by which drug manufacturers provided prescription contraception to the health centers at deeply discounted rates. The centers then passed along the savings to students and others.

Some Democratic lawmakers in Washington are pressing for new legislation by year’s end that would reverse the provision, which they say was inadvertently included in a law intended to reduce Medicaid abuse. In the meantime, health care and reproductive rights advocates are warning that some young women are no longer receiving the contraception they did in the past.

Some college clinics have reported sudden drops in the numbers of contraceptives sold; students have reported switching to less expensive contraceptives or considering alternatives like the so-called morning-after pill; and some clinics, including one at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Me., have stopped stocking some prescription contraceptives, saying they are too expensive.

“The potential is that women will stop taking it, and whether or not you can pay for it, that doesn’t mean that you’ll stop having sex,” said Katie Ryan, a senior at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, who said that the monthly cost of her Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo, a popular birth control pill, recently jumped to nearly $50 from $12.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/22/health/22contraceptives.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

:sarcasm: I know many universities over-stocked when they found out this was going to happen in hopes that Congress would fix the problem before it became a problem.

There should be nothing, and I mean NOTHING until the wedding night.

You wear white on your wedding day for a reason!!

:sarcasm:

when I was in college. Which reminds me, I need to try to call my oldest daughter again and wish her a Happy Thanksgiving.

You'd have to tack it onto a defense appropriations bill before Bush would let it pass.