Posted on 07/26/2007 9:31:13 AM PDT by Pyro7480
For years, drug companies sold birth-control pills and other contraceptives to university health services at a big discount. This has served as an entree to young consumers for the drug companies, and a profit center for the schools, which sell them to students at a moderate markup. Students pay perhaps $15 a month for contraceptives that otherwise can retail for $50 or more.Not only hadn't I realized that there was effectively a federal subsidy for drug companies to sell birth control to colleges, I hadn't even realized that colleges actually had found a way to profit from student fornication. Nice work if you can get it.
But colleges and universities say the drug companies have stopped offering the discounts, and are now charging the schools much more. The change has an unlikely origin: the Deficit Reduction Act signed by President Bush last year. The legislation aimed to pare $39 billion in spending on federal programs, from subsidized student loans to Medicaid. And among the changes was one that, through an arcane set of circumstances, created a disincentive for drug makers to offer school discounts.
My own college, the Academy for Fancy Lads, didn't seem to follow this pattern and instead tried to give us as much free birth control as we could carry. I suspect their financial plan was that more childless alumni would be inclined to leave their vast fortunes to their alma mater, rather than demanding the university accept their moronic progeny before they forked over any of the long green.
I think they pretty much gave the girls free IED's or pills or whatever they wanted through the student health plan. As for the gentlemen, I went back from Freshman orientation armed with enough condoms for a week's shore leave in Tijuana, which I promptly filled with water and threw out the window at passing feminists. There were always more Trojans in an envelope on the college dean's door, which sort of diminished the seriousness of a visit to him. Son, you need to work much harder, and don't forget to grab a fistful of jimmy-hats on your way back to study hall.
Anyway, this is a good deal even though it will affect college norms not a whit. That's not what I care about so much as that I feel zero obligation to have my tax dollars subsidize some DKE's consequence-free Natty-light-fueled post-toga contemplation of the sweet mysteries of life, when they could be applied instead toward introducing some terrorist to his seventy-two appointed hotties. And it's downright creepy that colleges have been turning a buck off of pushing the pill. Talk about your perverse incentives.
...In recent months, at Michigan State University, East Lansing, the price of Ortho Evra, a birth-control skin patch by Johnson & Johnson, more than doubled to $50 for a month's prescription from $20 last year. At the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo, a low-estrogen pill also by J&J, rose to $52 recently -- from $16 last year. The University of Texas at Austin now charges more than $50 for Organon Inc.'s popular NuvaRing, a monthly vaginal device, from $12.
To save money, at the University of Iowa, about three-fourths of students on Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo -- a pill that has no generic form -- have switched to a less-expensive option.
Such changes concern health professionals, who fear that switching is going to lead to unintended pregnancies by women who are less likely to consistently take a daily pill. "One of the seminal concepts in contraceptive medicine is when a woman is using a method correctly and successfully, the last thing you want to do is change her from that," says Lee Shulman, board chairman of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals. "You don't want to change her unless there is an absolute medical necessity to do so."
He says even switching from one type of daily pill to another can pose new risks for side effects and discomfort, potentially leading women to stop taking it.
Susan Maly, a 22-year-old student at the University of Iowa, says she struggled with switching pills recently. When she went to her college health center to get a refill on her Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo prescription a few months ago, she was distressed to find out that it had gone up to $54 from about $18. Starting this month, she has switched to a cheaper generic pill that has higher levels of estrogen than the Lo brand.
"That was an issue for me," says Ms. Maly, but she says she will see how things work out for a couple of months. Initially, she says she felt some heartburn side effects from the new pill, but that has since gone away. She finds the dramatic price increase "unfair" to women who have come to rely on birth control, and feel comfortable with the brand they are on
"This is the one thing that many females on campus are getting from student health," says Ms. Maly. "It felt like we were a target."
...Health professionals say it's particularly critical for college women to have access to cheap contraception. Two-thirds of college students reported having at least one sexual partner in the prior 12 months, according to a fall 2006 survey of more than 23,000 students by the American College Health Association. Condoms have been available free on many campuses, and are considered the best form of contraception for preventing sexually transmitted infections.
"Maybe, if more people switch from hormonal methods to condoms, we may see a positive outcome of fewer STI's," says Mary Hoban, a project director for the American College Health Association. "But from a contraceptive standpoint, we may see more unintended pregnancy. It's a double-edged sword."
About 40% of sexually active college women reported relying on pills and other prescription forms of birth control, according to the ACHA data.
Ping!
That's some pretty serious birth control, there...
When that girl says no, she means no! Better listen, or kaBOOOOM!
Why should taxpayers fund promiscuity?
Contraceptives need to be handles by the individual, after all, isn’t it a PERSONAL matter what goes on in the bedroom? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm? Consequences are also PERSONAL.
There’s a big time agenda, here. These girls could concentrate on their studies but they’re getting pulled into a hoax, and willingly. To begin with their not being told the truth about the abortofacient properties of birth contro pills, but they don’t want to know anyway.
It’s outrageous what we Americans allow the drug companies to get away with.
Whoops their= they’re
LOL! Inadvertantly-funny typo. That should be IUD. ;-)
It seems like such twisted thinking that college students have expected free or reduced cost birth control. This sends a strong message that sex is expected to happen.
I don’t want to get in anybody’s bedroom, but if the issue is who is paying for things, the colleges certainly should not be paying for an elective prescription such as birth control pills. Do they pay for other prescriptions for other health concerns? I bet they don’t.
Giving the pill to a bunch of promiscuous girls that offers zero protection when they are 3 sheets to the wind and agree to fornicate with nothing more than a wink and a nod just seems like a stupid idea to me.
He did something right on accident? I’ll take it!
“In recent months, at Michigan State University, East Lansing, the price of Ortho Evra, a birth-control skin patch by Johnson & Johnson, more than doubled to $50 for a month’s prescription from $20 last year. “
Young women have died from Ortho Evra, and J&J is getting sued over it.
I wonder if MSU could get sued for killing their own student this way?
Get a freaking job and buy your own damned birth control.
Bunch of whining candy assed spoiled kids...make me wanna puke the lot of them.
L
That’s why many young kids are LIBERALS.
They’re raised to believe they are ENTITLED to this stuff and to be IRRESPONSIBLE.
I think they were indoctrinated liberal before that.
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The cost of being a slut in college just went up!
Our culture, and world culture, is still reeling from that event and we are still only at the beginning of the shockwaves. It's not clear to me that modern culture will survive the pill in any recognizable form. For example, it is the single factor most responsible for the demographic assault Islam is making on the rest of the world. Our great-granddaughters may well wear burkhas because of the pill.
As for the "cheaper-in-the-long-run" morons, I would point out that sending bank robbers bagsful of money is "cheaper in the long run" too: no police, no courts, no trials, no jails, no parole department, no welfare to the criminal's family... need I go on?
Just saying.
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