Icky Ricky thinks the wimmins should just stop spending money on iPads. And craft tampons out of toilet rolls and old newspaper.

The whole point of the preventative care guidelines that HHS came up with as part of PPACA was that zero co-pay access now is cheaper for the system as a whole than paying later. That’s why the insurance companies didn’t come up with it themselves, because they’re not primarily focused on the overall cost curve of healthcare.

“This has nothing to do with access,” he said.

What a lying sack of dung.  Only a couple of months ago in Iowa, he gave an interview where he decried contraception as not being something that is okay and that he was the only candidate talking about it.  He doesn’t want anyone to have it.

The pill costs 6 dollars for four months in Australia, if you are on a low income. It’s about 35 dollars or so if your income is higher.

This is nitpicking, I know, but there are actually 13 4 week cycles in a year (52/4=13). So it would be $650, technically.

I live in a state where insurance is required to cover IVF trials, at enormous expense.  I don’t hear the likes of Santorum pitching fits about this, even though some people like myself think it should be a low priority for health coverage.

Then again, IVF is about planting manseed - and planting manseed helps keep the bitchez in line!

I’m sick of Catholics and religionists thinking that they are SOO special that their “offense” over having to pay two bits for POOR women’s healthcare (and I don’t for a second buy their fake outrage over birth control; they’re just pissed they’re not being allowed to discriminate against women as evidenced by the fact that there never seems to be any church mandates about Viagra) is somehow more offensive than the lot of them taking home MY money every April just for reproducing.  I don’t have children and get NOTHING in terms of a “child tax credit” or anything even remotely similar.  I think Catholics who do not use birth control should pay for poor women’s pills JUST to pay ME back for having to subsidize their multiple children.  What a bunch of hypocritical twunts.

Bear in mind that child tax credits aren’t that much, and have been phasing out ... and deductions are on a per person basis (and apply to spouses, grandmothers, uncles, children, or any other dependent in a household).

I understand your outrage, however.

I definately should have made my case better - I tried to specify “Catholics who don’t use birth control” yet I should have clarified that I think any religionist who opposes birth control should give back whatever government and societal benefits THEY receive that other people might be opposed to.

I have been spending too much time reading the comments on Jill Stanek’s blog which appears to be stacked with Catholic moms with large families and we know how the government takes care of them in various ways while they begrudge dirt cheap support for other people that would actually benefit the economy. D’OH!

I was forced to go off my pill THIS WEEK because they jacked up the co-payment on Ortho Tricylin Lo by 240% (the mandate doesn’t go into effect until Jan 1 2013), so the insurance companies are bilking us for as much as they can get away with until then (fuckers). It practically makes me want to stick my insurance company with a maternity bill…but, you know, not the best reason to bring a child into this world (though, maybe a better story than “prom”). I can’t afford the 240% increase and there’s no generic (and I don’t want to play guinea pig with my body when I know what works). If there’s a pressing reason to go back on (aka a fella), then we’ll see. I shall miss my cramp-free periods and flawless skin…sigh.

And of course even if you can afford it Ricky has no intention of letting you get your hands on it. He fully supports the idea that pharmacists can refuse to fill your prescription if it troubles their conscience.

Thealogian, do you qualify for Janssen’s assistance program?  They are the company that makes OTCL.  http://www.janssenpharmaceuticalsinc.com/our-company/patient-assistance

I’m not sure this is so much a trap as “Obama taking them at their word.”  It’s just that they’re so insane that nodding and publishing what they say is the same thing as them falling into a rhetorical trap.

Obama’s never been huge into protecting women’s girly bits.  I think even he is a little stunned.

Did this jump out at anyone else?

“This is simply someone trying to impose their values on somebody else…”

Projection is their mark.

I’m assuming the prices quoted for Yasmin, etc, are monthly.

@12:  I thought Obama sounded strongly in favor of protecting women’t healthcare today.  And I’ve heard FLOTUS was behind standing firm, as well as Sebelius and Valerie Jordan.  I think they learned form the plan B thing is that the other side will be mad no matter what you do, while you need your supporters on your side.

Those BC prices are ridiculous.  Pharmacist in Canada weighing in—most pills average about $35 Canadian for two packs, depending upon brand, pharmacy, and insurance coverage (they are fully covered by all prescription drug plans).  Plan B costs around $40.

I know Americans pay more for prescription drugs in general because of differences in generic availability and government drug plan bulk pricing agreements, but these things just aren’t that expensive.

An aside: condoms are also a full benefit for First Nations people in Canada, provided at no charge through the pharmacy with a prescription.  I wonder how something like that would go over, even absent the racism and bigotry specific to First Nations?

The Devil’s in the details, each side has been arguing over phantoms: free contraception won’t be available through much of the insurance system after ACA takes effect. But the system will be inching toward that ideal:

A few critical stories have been lost in the firestorm over the birth control rule the Obama administration is implementing as part of the Affordable Care Act. For example,
... contraceptives, classified as preventive care under the Affordable Care Act, will be provided at no cost to subscribers—but not all subscribers...

This new rule… will apply only to new policies that go into effect once the rule is established…

Free contraceptives falls under preventive services, and they are not required to be provided in either existing individual or employer-based plans. An HHS official verified and explained that “plans that were in place before the law was passed almost two years ago are grandfathered.” However, “as those plans change, they lose their grandfathered status. So, over time, fewer and fewer plans are grandfathered.”

Which means as the grandfathered plans change significantly enough to lose that status, the new free preventive health services, including contraception, will be incorporated into them. They lose their “grandfathered” status if “they choose to significantly cut benefits or increase out-of-pocket spending for consumers—and consumers in plans that make such changes will gain new consumer protections.”

While HHS couldn’t provide specifics as to how many women will not receive the benefit of free contraception, it’s most women who have been insured by the same policy since March 23, 2010, when the ACA went into effect.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/10/1063708/-Who-is-and-isn-t-covered-by-the-new-birth-control-nbsp-rules-?via=siderecent

Are these prices given by Julie Sunday per month? Per year? Per three month package? Given what you pay, I assume it’s what you pay per month - holy shit!
I have to pay for my (generic) birth control pills out of my own pocket and the price for a six-month package is around 45€, so less than 8€ a month. And that without any support from my health-care provider.
How come that the prices for these pills in the US are so outrageously high? I mean, German pharma-companies aren’t non-profits either, so I’m sure they make money from what they charge. So why are the pills 4 or 5 times as expensive in the US? Is there no regulation at all?

Yes, those are prices per month.  As an American who was without insurance for some time, those prices are “reasonable,” i.e., par for the course for medications.

The prices are like that because of the pharma lobby in Washington. 

I just got a letter from my insurance carrier telling me it has come to their attention that I haven’t been paying nearly enough for my contraception, so as of Jan. 1, the co-pay will be increased.  Luckily I am prescribed the three-month pills, and I was able to refill in the last weeks of December, so I am saved from the higher co-pay for a couple of months.

They graciously informed me that there are generics.  I am already taking a generic, and I am taking one that I know won’t fuck with my body.  These are hormonal drugs.  Every time you switch a brand, your body goes on wild swings.  At least mine does.  It’s not like just switching ibuprofen brands.  I had to discontinue taking some pills because of the way my body reacted, and it took a while to find a pill that worked with my chemistry.

@3 Cost in the UK is dependent on how much your GP wants to give you at a time. If you had the right GP, and had established by taking the pills on shorter trials that they work for you*, you could get them to prescribe a year’s worth in one go, and most prescriptions cost the same in the UK (about £7 each time you take a slip to the chemist’s, regardless of the number of pills you’re getting). I’ve paid £7 for a single box of citalopram to last me until my next doctor’s appointment, and £7 for 6 months worth of BC. It’s quite a beneficial system to the patient (and you don’t have to pay if you’re on jobseeker’s allowance or get some other kinds of benefits).

Douchebags like Santorum are really holding the U.S. up in progress on this front. I mean the cost is close to a non-issue even for poor people here. But clearly rabid conservatives want the cost of the pills to near-rival the costs of having a baby. At least these recent developments are bringing out their true colours.

*By “work for you” I mean that they’re the right form of BC, convenient for you, don’t cause extreme side effects, etc.

Man, I was whining because my implanon ended up costing my whole deductible, then barely a month later they announced the free birth control rules - now I’m kind of glad I got it before, can’t imagine how much more of a price hike (price without coverage:$1200-1500 [for three years]) they would have come up with.

Wow, I hope this asswipe actually gets nominated, and then about a week before election, I want him to get busted having a Ted Haggard/Larry Craig sort of incident.

Obama would beat him pretty easily even if that didn’t happen, but it would be nice to see Frothy get absolutely decimated electorally and then effectively banished for life from the public sphere in utter humiliation.

Couldn’t happen to a more deserving Mixture.

I have fantastic prescription coverage through my research assistant position - I pay five dollars a month for my Apri (generic Desogen). Granted I’m barely above the poverty line and it’s definitely in the school’s best interest to have its grad students planning their pregnancies, but I’d forgotten how amazing our coverage was. (Copays tripled about three years ago but have since come back down - which made me an extremely happy Hobbes.)

I’m on Lutera through Planned Parenthood at $30 per month, and I thought I was getting a damn good deal until I heard from my UK friends. I still think it’s a good deal, since I can get three months at a time.

I wish Rick Santorum (snerk) and the Catholic Bishops could get my chestburster alien cramps and my three month plus long period. It would serve them right.

@speedbudget
Thanks for the info. I thought I knew about the craziness that is the American health-care system, but appearantly it’s even more fucked up…

The Santorum statements are assholish no matter the price range we’re talking about, but calling almost hundred dollars a month (every month, probably for the span of 30 years) “small expenditures” is something that should haunt him throughout the nomination (and election?) process.

As a guy, I use a condom.  Not only does it prevent pregnancy, but it impedes any STDs.

It strikes me that this will push us one step closer to single-payer insurance. If your employer can fuck with what medicines or services you need in such an open and sexist manner, people will start looking harder at the alternatives. Between the PP/Komen mess and the Old Men in Robes dictates, “big government” (ie, effective gov’t that is fair to all citizens) doesn’t look so bad.

In Los Angeles, if you’re single and making under $1,200 a month you can enroll in a new healthcare plan Healthy Way L.A.. You get your healthcare for free through clinics—and prescriptions are also free.

Although the California legislature recently scotched single payer—damn the Blue Dog Democrats and Republicans—Healthy way might be a move toward that on the local level.

Previous to Healthy Way L.A. the only options for the uninsured were Medical (income no higher than $600 a month!), or the California pool ($500 a month, $1,500 a year deductible.)

Last year, my health insurance stopped covering any multiple sclerosis drugs on their standard prescription list.  These drugs cost roughly $2000 a month, but they’ve kept me walking, so there’s that.  So now in addition to the ENORMOUS monthly cost (we are self-employed) we now pay the $5000 deductible.  Yep - this year our bill will be $30,000 to insure a family of four (everyone besides me is healthy.)

Wow, I just needed to rant.  Luckily my husband had a vasectomy after the second kid, so birth control is not a problem for us.

It will be fantastic when we can all get the BC we need at no cost.  But in the meantime, those of you who aren’t covered should at least consider trying a type that has generics.  I know it’s not that easy because everyone reacts differently to each type, but I think it’s at least worth a shot if the alternative is nothing at all.

I’ve been using Ortho Tricyclen for 11 years (with a brief affair with Seasonale), and it went generic years ago.  Ortho Tricyclen Lo was the response to that, as I believe it is newer and doesn’t have any generics yet (I don’t know when the patent will run out).  I’ve had several different generic versions of Ortho TriCyclen and they all worked fine for me.  I think there are other brands that also have generics.

@29Cay:  They consider MS drugs a luxury?  That’s appalling.  I was going to say I agree with bethynyc that these guys ought to have cramps/endless periods, but MS with no recourse to available drugs would be even better karma.

Let’s be clear about what this is - it’s not “pro-life” in any sense of the word. There is no “fetus life” at stake here, this is about controlling people and their bodies.

And this isn’t even for a majority within a number of religions, this is to try to appease a loud and obnoxious minority within one religion. This isn’t about religious freedom, this is about people using God as an excuse to exercise their asinine views on large portions of the American population.

I wish the “liberal” media would bring up the fact that Santorums wife had an abortion at 5 months old to save her life. Frankly, I would never give an abortion to a forced birther. Fuck ‘em.

@James: idk if you’re a troll but condoms break. Not to mention it’s all too easy for men to “oops” women in order to control them.

My insurance plan BLOWS in terms of birth control - I never take the pill and I know pills are covered under my plan but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there are all kinds of caveats to it.  The only other thing it covers is abortion - if you can find an in-network provider.  You would think the idiots would cover every type of b/c there is because it’s cheaper than prenatal care and childbirth care which are all fully covered as well.

I paid almost $800 out of pocket in late 2009 for a Paragard.  I’m glad I did as it works well for me and it’s not like some government agent can come and yank it out of me.  By the time it’s ready to be replaced I’ll be too old to get pregnant and the doctors will finally sterilize me without the “don’t you want babies” lines.

Anyone else consider this analogy:

Jehovah’s Witnesses (if they owned affiliated businesses and were a-holes like the RCC) could get policies that excluded payment for blood transfusions in surgeries or all their ailliated business employees.)  And what about businesses owned by devout JW’s?  Couldn’t THEY calim religious exemptions and do the same? What about illegitimate children?  many religions rown on fornication outside marriage, so can they write policies that deny coverage to kids born “out of wedlock?” What abotu a religion (and there are some weird sects) that bar “miscegenation;”  could they deny coverage to one spouse of a mixed race couple?  We can go on here, right?  What say the RCC then?

Tabbycat - I really wish I could get condoms covered as I react badly to hormonal BC.  My insurance would cover the hormonal BC, and did to 100% - $5 co-pay to visit the nurse last time I tried with Depo (about 5 yrs ago).

@10 That pharmacist crap drives me nuts.  If a Christian Scientist slipped through pharmacy school (I’m hoping, probably incorrectly, that a pharmacy school would tend not to admit someone they knew was a CS), would they then be allowed to refuse to fill ANY prescriptions?

I can kinda, sorta see the proprietor of a private pharmacy being allowed not to stock RU486 or something to which they could claim a religious objection, although as a devout atheist I think their “reason,” aka delusion, is crazy.  I’d prefer otherwise, but there does seem to be at least room to debate the public good vs. the right to control your own business.  But to prevent Walgreens from firing a pharmacist who refuses to do 100% of their job based on their religiosity is an outrage.  Would my Christian Scientist pharmacist be allowed to come to work every day and just tell every customer that they should leave empty-handed and pray?

Scrawny—the problem with allowing “private pharmacy run by a random nutjob to decide they won’t fill X prescriptions” is that pharmacists are licensed by the state and it’s not as easy as just “random person X setting up shop next to you with a big sign reading ‘we fill ALL prescriptions’”—that person has to be licensed as well. If you’re licensed by the government to dispense controlled substances, then really any drug approved by the FDA needs to be on the table.

Mighty Ponygirl,

Exactly.  They are getting special privileges from the state.  In return, the state has a right to dictate how they perform tasks related to those privileges - for the same reason they have a right to tell other people they can’t perform the tasks at all.

I wonder if he thinks it’s affordable because he grew up when it cost $4 to get a month’s supply of pills at college clinics, not realizing this was because most of the cost was subsidized by PP and the pill manufacturers themselves. 

Today BCP is no longer allowed to be discounted at college clinics because of the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act.
http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2007/oct/22/birth-control-cost-jumps-after-act-slashes-funding/

Oh wait, Santorum was in the Senate at the time, and voted for the bill, so he should know this.
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=1&vote=00303

Treefinger: unless something changed drastically since I got my free Implanon, contraceptives are exempt even from the £7 UK prescription charge. I’ve never paid a penny even for the unusual brands I needed after a DVT. There’s a “these are non-chargeable contraceptives” box to tick on the form under all the other exemptions (pregnancy, childhood, pensioners, etc).

Oh, and it is easy to get free condoms here too, especially for young people. Family Planning clinics give them out and university medical practices practically throw’em at you. I asked for some in case they were needed on a 1 month field trip once and they handed over thirty packets of five.

This is why I love the NHS. Cameron’s plans to hand it over to his rich pals are horrifying.

in Germany, the Pill is covered 100% for teens, after that it’s out of pocket (last I checked, 50 euro for 3 months). Now that is an arrangement that would give the religious right a stroke :-p

In Brazil for years now you can get the pill on drugstores for the equivalent to US 10 cents, because the rest of the cost is subsidized by the government (similar deals on blood pressure medication and insulin, I think.) We’re the country with most Catholics in the world, and abortion is illegal and there’s a vigilance system for pregnant women, but even so the government considers family planning as an essential public health matter and tool of combatting poverty.
I remember when the subsides were announced, and I didn’t remember seeing a peep from the bishops, so today I googled and found their announcement. They warned that the whole society was going to be destroyed by separating sex from life, and demanded that money equivalent to the family planning budget was given to the church to be used for promoting the Billings method and “family defense”. They were completely ignored.
But the point is, “my freedom of religion is being breached by using tax funds for these programs” wasn’t even mentioned, because that doesn’t fly here.

I also reacted badly to hormonal BC, back in the day (when hormonal levels were also much higher than now.)

My favorite barrier method was the cervical cap, more tightly fitted and easier to use than the diaphragm—which can be combined with a condom and/or spermicide.

I remained pregnancy free using the cervical cap alone, and other barrier methods like foam, sponge, condoms.

Loved my cervical cap! So easy and effortless to use compared to the diaphragm that bounced off the bathroom ceiling more than once.

Combined with a condom and/or spermicide, the cervical cap also seems to have has about the same failure as the pill.

I would love to see free condoms available, but not necessarily through insurance.  They should be free in a place that is easily accessible by teenagers, like maybe the high school cafeteria (nurse’s office would lead to nosy conservative nurses).  Even if hormonal BC is free, it’s hard for teens to get if they don’t have a cooperating parent or reliable transportation.  They need a parent to drive them to the doctor for the scrip, and then the parents will know when they see the insurance summary of benefits.  I was lucky and had a great mom, but many teens don’t.  And high-school age teens are really the last people that should be dealing with unwanted pregnancy.  But wow, can you imagine what would happen if some politician even suggested free condoms in high schools across the country?

The unequal burden of contraception is a significant injustice, and I fully support the government subsidising it as a means of addressing this inequality.  It’s necessary healthcare.

However, it is a bit odd for it to be covered via an insurance model.  Insurance is for risk pooling.  The need for contraception isn’t something that you may “catch” or “come down with” at some point.  It’s an inherent part of being female and having sex.  It would similarly be odd to have insurance cover toothpaste, or food.  With thees products, everyone needs them, and it’s silly to increase everyone’s insurance premium by X+5 dollars each month so that one can avoid spending X dollars to buy it.  But unlike these, contraception is an unequal burden, and insurance can function as a redistribution mechanism.  But I’d prefer single payer to this current system for forcing coverage.

James, you are considerate and thoughtful to use a condom.

However, many women take “birth control pills” for reasons other than contraception - reasons such as preventing ovarian cysts in polycystic ovarian syndrome.  It doesn’t matter that they aren’t taking them for birth control purposes alone, they still get hit with excessive costs that no user of Viagra does!

@42

O Rly? Sweet. I do normally get them at the same time as another prescription though, so it might not matter for me personally (they don’t charge me twice as much for doing this, and it’s not just cause its BC because I had a trial of anti-psychotics once* and didn’t have to pay). Still, that’s a great policy.

*Arguably the dumbest thing about prescriptions in the UK (though I’m sure it happens in a lot of places) is the ease with which doctors give you silly prescriptions without thinking them through. It’s pretty clear I never needed these. Also one guy put me on MIRTAZAPINE (which causes drowsiness) when I first got diagnosed with depression, even though one of my main complaints was sleeping all the time. Those things kept me knocked out for about 18 hours at a time.

Thank dog Washington state has an insurance plan specifically to cover contraceptives/ womens’ health. I’m on a long waiting list for the public plan insurance, and may never qualify, but when I went to PP they were able to bill my visit to this plan, freeing up more resources for them to use for other people. My visit and a year’s worth of pills, plus several packages of Plan B they tossed in the bag ended up costing me nothing.

Now if only they had something similar for antidepressants. With my employee discount at Hellmart a month’s worth of generic Effexor is $110. The pharmacy cashier felt awful about me having to pay out taht much a month, so this last time she ran me through some kind of ‘persons in need’ system and it came up for only $13. I have no idea if this is something I can stay on or not though… but I can’t just quit the medication because of horrendous withdrawals and the fact it’s the only one that has worked for any length of time.

I love being an American.

@pitbullgirl65:  Not trying to be a troll, more point out that there’s more than just avoiding pregnancy to worry about, and it should be the responsibility of women alone.

Er, should NOT be the responsibility of women alone

I would love to see free condoms available, but not necessarily through insurance.  They should be free in a place that is easily accessible by teenagers, like maybe the high school cafeteria (nurse’s office would lead to nosy conservative nurses). 
Comment #48: bananacat on 02/11 at 07:13 PM

Lots of schools don’t have nurses’ offices any more anyway.

However, many women take “birth control pills” for reasons other than contraception - reasons such as preventing ovarian cysts in polycystic ovarian syndrome.  It doesn’t matter that they aren’t taking them for birth control purposes alone, they still get hit with excessive costs that no user of Viagra does!
Comment #50: Ms Kate on 02/11 at 07:41 PM

Viagra isn’t actually cheap.  And most pharmacy plans cover only 4 or 5 per month and there’s a significant co-pay, something like $15 per pill.  If you’re not covered it’s about $25 per pill.

I understand why people compare BCP to Viagra because of the disparity in pharmaceutical coverage.  The solution isn’t to cut Viagra; it should still be available.  Like BCP it benefits both partners.

@ wnoise

What? Insurance companies shouldn’t cover medications to prevent health conditions? Even when they would break even or do slightly better because of the decreased costs of preventing unwanted pregnancy? (ie, no X + 5 because without the unintended pregnancies everyone is providing coverage for it would work out to X - 0.5, but that would just insurance profit rather than brought back to the consumer) That is just stupidity. Not that insurance companies AREN’T stupid, smoking cessation aids not being covered and they’d rather hope that you switch companies before COPD and lung cancer catch up, but the principle is hardly unsound. Since we seem so completely wedded to the for-profit insurance companies, might as well make them cover medications so that real people can lead real lives, not this “well I suppose women could just stop fucking except when they don’t want children, even in marriage” garbage nonsense.

There’s no trap, just a matter of semantic.

Consider these two policies:

A. An employer is required to provide its employees health insurance that covers birth control.

B. An employer is required to provide its employees health insurance.  The health insurance company is required to cover birth control.

I can understand someone endorsing both A and B, and I can understand someone rejecting both A and B.  But I cannot understand someone rejecting A and embracing B, because they are effectively the same policy.  Ultimately, all insurance costs are passed on to the purchaser, so I cannot see how policy B is different in any way from policy A, other than using slightly different words to describe it.

Yet it seems that the White House yesterday switched from A to B, and that change is being viewed by some as a significant accommodation to those who objected to policy A.  The whole thing leaves me scratching my head.

I think John Cochrane’s Op-Ed is the best explanation yet:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204136404577210730406555906.html?mod=WSJ_article_comments#articleTabs=article

I haven’t taken hormonal BC since I was a teen…I remember it being $20-odd, but it may have gone up a lot. Also the doctor gave me a bunch of sample packs when I started so I could try it without telling my parents. Last time I bought Plan B it was I think $12, but again it may have gone up.

Anyway, have I mentioned how much I love being Canadian?

@Sofia Turkan,
The Catholic church has a history of just letting things happen even if they are technically against it, as long as they are able to wash their hands of responsibility.  For example:

1) Santorum’s wife was allowed to induce labor before the fetus was viable (for health reasons) and then when the fetus predictably didn’t survive outside, it wasn’t technically an abortion because their intention wasn’t to cause that death.

2) In the case of ectopic pregnancy, Catholic women aren’t allowed to have an abortion, but they can have the entire fallopian tube removed, fetus and all.  Even though they know perfectly well the fetus won’t survive (not that it could either way), it doesn’t count as an abortion because their real goal was to remove the “damaged” fallopian tube, and the abortion was just a side effect, but they’re not directly responsible for it.

3) They are allowed to use vaccines that were developed with fetal stem cells, even though they are against stem cell research.  They didn’t directly do and support that research, and it’s just an unfortunate but non-intentional side effect of using vaccines.

So they really should be all for a law where they are just paying for their insurance, even though the premiums would be slightly higher at first, because they just plain want insurance.  It’s not their fault that the insurance plan covers contraception, and there’s nothing they can do about it.  They’re just going along, buying insurance, and if that company insists on covering BC then that’s not their fault.  This should be right up their alley, but of course it isn’t because they won’t be happy until no woman ever has access to pregnancy prevention.

In reality, this will reduce costs long-term.  Insurance companies seem to look only at the next quarter, and not long-term savings.  Providing things like birth control, flu shots, and smoking cessation aids should be a no-brainer, but a bunch of executives only see the increased cost now, and the drastically reduced cost several months or years from now.

An aside: condoms are also a full benefit for First Nations people in Canada, provided at no charge through the pharmacy with a prescription.  I wonder how something like that would go over, even absent the racism and bigotry specific to First Nations?

Given that the rates for teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases among First Nations and Inuit populations are multiple times the Canadian average, one can make several arguments about why racism and bigotry are completely separate issues from whether or not free preventative measures are a good idea.

Lots of schools don’t have nurses’ offices any more anyway.

Wow. Now I feel old and out of touch—I had no idea. (Though I suppose I will quickly find out a lot of things like this if I ever have kids.)

To TheRealistMom:

Some supermarkets (here, Ralph’s) and big box stores likeTarget and Walmart offer many prescriptions for $4 copays.

This site claims to list all the various free and low-cos tmedication programs:

http://freemedicine.com/medlist/Effexor.shtml

Also: if you’re near either the border to Canada or Mexico, a short drive will bring you to pharmacies that sell prescription drugs at prices a fraction of those you’d pay in a U.S. pharmacy.

I’ve also bought prescriptions off websites that claim to be Canadian or Mexican pharmacies, for cut rate prices. Google is your friend.

<blockquote>Lots of schools don’t have nurses’ offices any more anyway.

Wow. Now I feel old and out of touch—I had no idea. (Though I suppose I will quickly find out a lot of things like this if I ever have kids.)</blockquote>

I don’t mean to be an ass about this, but…

People who say shit like this: WHAT THE FUCK did you THINK was being cut from school budgets?

@Cay #29:

If you haven’t already see this TEDx talk by Dr. Terry Wahls on reversing MS symptoms, please take a look—you may find it interesting.

@64

It’s inappropriate to tell people about “cures” and management of their own conditions that they themselves are intimately aware of.

#63: Actually, art, music, and physical education. Cutting off the school nurse sounds to me like a real liability issue; do the teachers dispense needed meds now? They don’t have the training; the administration? They’re completely useless!

Yeah, the school nurse wouldn’t have been first on my list either.

@14: Yes. BCP are $50-$100 a month without insurance.

Thanks, James. Without your manly wisdom, I don’t think the dim little ladies here would know that condoms—-is that how you spell it?—-were available. Being dumb ladies, it never sinks in hearing about condoms for years and years. Certainly there is no reason outside of “ladies is dumb” to think a woman might prefer birth control pills. No reason to think, for instance, that anyone is in a mutually monogamous relationship where birth control pills permit spontaneity while the monogamy prevents disease. No reason at all! It’s just “ladies=dumb”.

I think school nurses have been gone for a long time. When I was in elementary school in the 90s there was still art and PE, but there was one nurse for, I think, 5 schools. A boy broke his nose once and had to wait a couple hours for the nurse to come send him to the hospital, but no one ever brought up bringing back school nurses as a preventative measure. When I was in middle and high school, there was no nurses office and I never even heard of a travelling school nurse at those schools. I sort of thought that school nurses went the way of film strips and smoking in the teachers lounge.

Okay, that was definitely not the case when I was in middle and high school in the 90’s. Nor is it in the middle and elementary schools my kids attend. I live in Virginia, and not the nicer bit towards DC, where on earth were you all?!

Hum, if you’re taking Effexor there should be a generic!  I know the long-dose version is much more agreeable, the original one ought to be easier.

What bugs me is when there isn’t a generic version available at all… And there’s no patent involved.  That troubles me that we in the US can’t get decent drugs that are available world wide.

Insurance covers more than random risks or outsized risks.  It can also cover things temporally, or across pools of population.  It’s not just women who benefit from birth control.

Health insurance isn’t something just for ‘if you get sick’ it’s a method to make sure that health care is available when you need it.  Which is all the time, just a varied levels.  Health isn’t something you go around doing without.

@66

1) Trained nurses cost more than part-time art teachers.

2) They’ve already cut those.  And all the guidance counselors and librarians.  What else is left?

In reality, what they usually do is just cut down on the number of nurses per school, as alysia described.  Rather than one per school, you have one that’s shared by all the high schools in the district, or one per district, etc.

I wish I could share Amanda’s optimism, but it seems to me that this is a fight we’ve been having and losing for awhile now.  Many states now allow pharmacists to ignore the law and refuse to dispense birth control which anti-choicers have been exploiting by turning out anti-choice pharmacists as fast as they can.  And then there was the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act as noted above which removed subsidies for BC.  It was presented as an unintended side effect of the law but I’m skeptical that those who wrote the law were unaware of its effect. Add to that the hard push to defund PP all over the US and we are already in the midst of an all out assault on BC.  I know that the vast majority of citizens approve of and use BC, but when was the last time the majority in this country got what it wanted?

I feel like this list (the prices!) should be posted everywhere. I’ve always had health insurance (yay middle class parents!) and I thought my HBC was expensive - $25 a month or $50 for three, as NuvaRing has no generic (and I’m WAY too disorganized to do a pill-a-day format). However, this is so much less expensive than out-of-pocket that I’m feeling kind of guilty for not realizing how much better off I had been.

It seems shockingly inhumane that those who need the ability to control their fertility the most (ie, those on a shoestring budget) are the ones most likely to be reduced to crossing their fingers and praying. Unless that’s the plan! They hope that having to pray every month that you aren’t pregnant will drive you back to the church.

School nurses - this is one of the issues very much dependent on where you are as the number of pupils per nurse and if I nurse is required in each facility or can be shared between facilities to have sufficient coverage per pupil vary drastically state to state.  In MA, I know that when my children finished about 10 and 7 years ago, several schools had nurses shared in our district, but all had some time when a nurse was scheduled to be in the school.  Part of our middle school and upper elementary school consolidations were to handle the drug despensing issue.

To my knowledge, each of the schools in the district where my children attend school has a school nurse. This is suburban Long Island, New York.

If the cost were really trivial, the issue would not be paying for it, it would have to be access to it - exactly what he starts out saying it is not.

Also: if you’re near either the border to Canada or Mexico, a short drive will bring you to pharmacies that sell prescription drugs at prices a fraction of those you’d pay in a U.S. pharmacy.

Unfortunately, the Mexico option isn’t there anymore. I mean, the country still exists, but it’s really become too dangerous to go across the border. And no, I’m not being a scaredy-cat gringo who’s a-feared of the brown people. I am Mexican, in part. I speak Spanish. And I grew up in El Paso. It used to be routine for most of us to shop in Juarez for all manner of cheap goods, from groceries to construction materials, booze, vanilla, even dental care. Especially, prescription drugs.  But because of the ongoing problems with the drug cartels, no one I know will set foot on in Mexico unless it’s absolutely necessary.

OTOH, the online solution you mentioned is probably a good workaround.

In a way, I agree with Santorum that contraception shouldn’t be paid for by insurance: being fertile is not an accident or an illness. But the same goes for all routine medical care, and my response is that those costs should be socialized because equal access to routine medical care is a human right.