Congress Screws Poor Women and Students

Is anyone in Washington, DC paying attention?

College women and poor women are now at risk for unplanned pregnancy because of a screw-up in Congress. A new change in federal law means poor women and students are now paying sharply higher prices for prescription contraceptives.

The New York Times reports:

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.

I just watched SiCKO yesterday, and reading this today is making me SiCKO again!

Abstinence only advocates love the change, but keep in mind this crowd thinks their parents rode to school on dinosaures!

Contact your members of Congress and urge them to fix this. And while you have them on the phone, if it's a Democrat you are speaking with tell them to get a spine!

Representative Joseph Crowley, a Democrat from New York who introduced a bill on the matter, said the change would require no taxpayers’ money to subsidize contraception. [NOTE: emphasis mine] The drug manufacturers would pay for any discounts, but would not be required to pay larger Medicaid rebates because of those discounts.

“We’re not promoting promiscuity, but we’re also cognizant that people live,” said Mr. Crowley, who is among the lawmakers who say the change that took discounts away from university clinics was inadvertent. “We’re talking about adults, responsible adults who want to do the responsible thing.”

God forbid taxpayers should help students and poor women prevent unplanned, unwanted, pregnancy.