Birth Control Prices Go Up on College Campuses

[Polly]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070323/ap_on_he_me/colleges_contraceptives

[Lori]

Yet another reason why we need national health care.

I think the lack of access women have to safe, affordable, reliable birth control is just appalling. When I was in grad school, the union actually had to lobby to get our birth control covered for the entire year, rather than for the 10 months they were covering it. I guess the fact that women menstruate and are fertile EVERY month didn't occur to them.

I just hate how hard it is for young women to access birth control.

[Danielle]

Well Lori, even with National health care, we still have to pay for medications here and it's very pricey if you don't have medical insurance (as is the case with most college students).

I just hate how hard it is for young women to access birth control.

ITA with that. It's equally difficult and frustrating here.

[Lori]

Danielle, why would college students lack health insurance under a national system? I'm just curious.

I think it's a huge problem that so many people in their late teens and early twenties have no health insurance at all, when that's exactly the time when it's so important to have consistent access to reliable birth control for most people. I know people who pay up to $40/month for birth control pills, which is just crazy. There have been many times when I haven't had an extra $40 to spend on anything, especially when I was in college. I think that's why you end up with so many people skipping a day here and there to make their pills last longer, assuming that a missed day won't matter, and then ending up pregnant.

[gr8mommy]

I don't know. On the one hand, I do wish birth control were more accessible and affordable. Yet at the same time I wish those who perhaps can't afford it would have the self control to abstain.

eta: I'm just talking about high school and college age, single, without a self supporting job type women (and men, for that matter).

[Danielle]

Danielle, why would college students lack health insurance under a national system? I'm just curious.



They don't but BC (or any drug) costs are not covered for anyone under the national system. Mine, for example, are covered by my employer's health insurance.

[Kate]

I can't even begin to get my head around that one either.

Over here, unless our current government wants to mess with the system we have now, three months on the pill costs me less than $5, but that's because I'm low income enough to qualify for a Health Care Card.

BUT, if I weren't, the most I would have to pay for a PBS listed contraceptive pill would be around $21 for 3 months...and as far as being a student goes, most students are deemed to be low income enough to qualify for the Health Care Card anyway...and from my personal experience of the oncampus doctors we had, I think I spent my first stint at uni taking free pills, because the doctors were given so many free samples that if they didn't hand them out they would have probably been crushed under the weight of pill boxes :giggle

[Danielle]

Okay, I need to correct myself... the government DOES provide drug benefits to people on social assistance and disability, that's all though.

[Lori]

I don't know. On the one hand, I do wish birth control were more accessible and affordable. Yet at the same time I wish those who perhaps can't afford it would have the self control to abstain.

eta: I'm just talking about high school and college age, single, without a self supporting job type women (and men, for that matter).

Realistically, I don't see any chance of that happening. We've extended adolescence so long that now many people aren't married and/or self-supporting until their late 20s or early 30s. There hasn't been a society in human history where people routinely put off having sex until they were that age, and we're not going to change human nature so that we're the first. Having the self-control to wait until marriage isn't that hard when you know or expect to be married at 18 or 19 or 20. When you know it's very possible that you might be 30 before you're married, suddenly I think we're talking about doing something that's pretty much entirely unrealistic for the vast majority of people, if we really want them to abstain.

I really believe that, if we want people to wait until marriage for sex, the only realistic response is to institute policies that would make marrying earlier more realistic. Yet economic circumstances cause people to make the very sensible choice to put off marriage until later and later. I know that we plan on encouraging our children to be serious about their relationships in their late teens and early 20s, and we hope that they'll find their life partner when they are younger, rather than older, and don't put off adulthood until they're 30. I think we need to get out of the mindset that college and marriage are mutually exclusive choices for people in their late teens and early 20s, and provide real incentives to make that a reality (such as more housing for families on college campuses, childcare for students, etc.). More and more people are going to college, and it's taking them longer and longer to finish degrees, and what that's going to result in is more people who have more years before they get married, and the vast, vast majority of them are going to be having sex.

[Christine]

If I remember correctly, I was able to get BCP at Planned Parenthood for a very cheap price. And then there are always condoms.

[gr8mommy]

:rofl No, not realistic. But a whole lot simpler, no? :wink

[Jessica]

I really don't see how national health care would drastically affect bcp availability. Most insurances don't cover bcp as it is, and the government isn't just going to give every single person every single medical option available. Our government would screw up a national health care system worse than Canada has! (No offense to Canadians. ;))

Christine made an excellent point about Planned Parenthood. That would certainly be an option for college students. Many local health dept. also offer birth control at little to no cost. The availability is there, the problem is people expect to be spoon fed their bcp instead taking responsibility and getting it for themselves.

[Lori]

I would hope that birth control would be covered under a national health care system. I would hope that most insurers covered it. The fact that insurance companies are willing to cover Viagra but not birth control is a really sad comment on women's health care.

You can get birth control at Planned Parenthood for a reasonable price, usually, but not everyone has access to a PP. And, for some who do, it means walking through protesters who are calling you a murderer every time you want your birth control so that you don't need to get an abortion, which is no fun, not to mention somewhat scary. (I had a friend who had awful experiences with protesters while getting her birth control from PP.)

There are always ways to get medications you need, but they are often time-consuming, really complicated, and slow. I had been taking Zoloft for a while, and when I switched insurance companies, they classified it as a third-tier drug (this is before it went generic), and it took eight weeks before the paperwork went through to get it covered. It was so expensive at the regular price that I just could not afford it (something like $90 for a one-month supply :eek), and I called around to some clinics and agencies, but they wouldn't see anyone who had insurance, or would only take people on Medicaid. I ended up stretching about a month of pills to last two months, which is what I fear a lot of people do when they don't have the money to cover prescriptions. If you do that with birth control, your birth control will fail.

I ended up using a diaphragm in college because birth control was expensive and I wanted something I didn't need to worry about running out of. It wasn't an ideal option, but we were at a point in our relationship where, if I did get pregnant, we could have dealt with it, so it worked for us. But I wouldn't have been willing to take that chance if I wasn't in a committed relationship.

I just find it hard to believe that we could have a worse health care system, particularly regarding prescription drugs and prescription drug prices, than we have now. About 1 in 5 Americans is uninsured, and even among the insured, prescriptions are either very expensive or simply unavailable under their insurance. But my feeling tends to be that, as a general rule, things that could be reasonably be called necessities (K-12 education, health care, housing) should never be profit-making enterprises.

[Danielle]

Our government would screw up a national health care system worse than Canada has! (No offense to Canadians. ;))



I think we have a very good health care system. Sure, it has problems but no Canadian child has ever gone without treatment for lack of money or insurance and no one has ever starved trying to pay their medical bills ;).