Birth Control Price Hike: $$$ or More Abortions?

Caitlin Mullen:

Young women in America will soon pay as much as three times more for birth control.

Pricier birth control is one thing college students can’t afford with tuition constantly increasing, expensive books and gas prices continually rising.

The drug companies saw selling birth control at a lower cost as a good investment, as they hoped that college students would continue to use that birth control after college.

But the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 required drug companies to pay more money to be a part of Medicaid, therefore scrapping the reduced prices given to colleges.  Before the bill was revised, pharmaceutical companies offered discounts to college health facilities.  They banked on the idea that college women would become loyal to brand name birth control and stay with the brnad after college, even when those handy discounts disappeared.

College health services bought birth control in bulk once the act was signed into law, to have a solid supply available bought at the cheaper price.  Now that supplies are running out, NIU Health Services will have to purchase more birth control at the higher price, requiring college students to pay more.

If something gets too expensive, you either put up with it and pay, or stop buying.  If prices get too high, college students may no longer be reliable consumers.

True, condoms remain, and while some may think condoms are annoying, having a 6 month old {age changed to be more realistic - Jen (Originally 2 year old)} screaming at 3 am is more annoying.  However, despite withstanding the test of time, couples now realize they’re not the only option.

Birth control methods such as the pill allow couples to pre-plan for instances where fiddling with packages isn’t favorable, such as the infamous atomic-bomb-withstanding condom wrapper.  It may seem silly, but people are used to more convenient methods like the patch or the ring, and without them, some may decide to forgo birth control altogether.

Contrary to populat belief among older generations, pushing abstinence is no longer a realistic option.  Young people will have sex if they feel ready, not in accordance with whether contraceptives are available.  If college students can’t afford birth control, they won’t stop having sex.

Without birth control at a reasonable price, pregnancy rates could rise even more.  Unplanned pregnancies will continue to skyrocket.  Abortions could also rise if the pregnancies are unwanted.

The only way to stop unplanned pregnancies is to provide adequate protection to those who need it. {Or to just not have sex - Jennifer}

While drug companies need to make money and the government must regulate costs, college students also need to be able to afford things that promote a healthy lifestyle.  Birth control, for many young people, is a necessity to ensure that healthy lifestyle choices can be properly planned for.

Excluding college health providers from the Deficit Reduction Act would be the best solution to this problem.  Allowing college health services to continue to offer discounts to penny-pinching students will send the message that America wants its youth to be mature and conscientious about their decisions.

The American College Health Association is pushing for colleges to be free from the control of this act, allowing students to continue to purchase birth control at the low prices at which they currently are.

College students of all people, need to save money where they can.

America needs to provide the right resources at a reasonable price.

Sorry for keeping the inconsequential stuff in there, but you don’t have access to the article on the net, so I wanted to include the entire article.

Anyway, this appears to me to be a method used by the government to make abortions more common place and to punish the wealthy (or those who can afford to go $80,000 in debt paying for college only to live in a cardboard box for 20 years to pay off the debt later).

By, in essence, conspiring to make more abortions annually, they force the people to become desensitized to abortions and thus, can make it easier to over turn such common sense laws as the ban on partial birth abortion as well as shut down clinics who actually attempt to convince women to keep their babies.

Likewise, they punish the “wealthy” by removing the discounts they receive at the time in their lives they most need discounts.  Do 80 year old grandmothers need discounts on contraceptives?  No.  Not unless they are extremely perverted!  But 18 year old college kids iwth no money, a part time job that is more a way to kill time then earn money and huge debts stacking up do!

Nah, cause they’ve been ragging on pharmecutical companies for years.

And let’s remember, Bush signs just about anything that comes out of the Congress.  Other then the war funding bill, I don’t know of anything he’s vetoed.

Then look at the Congress, pretty much 50/50 with the majority pretending to be in the minority the whole time.

So yea, I can see how this could be a method to increase abortion rates to desensitize the people so as to make it easier to pass more restrictive laws on pro-lifers and make it easier on pro-choicers.

There is, you just don’t want to look at it a different way dear, and that’s fine.  Both are opinions and as such, both are valid until there’s conclusive proof one is more valid then the other. :)

Anyway, I think the college health services need to be exempted.  They should be permitted to purchase any legal drugs intended for legal use at bulk discounts.  I’d rather students get bulk discounts on pharmecuticals (and yes, I know I habitually misspell that word) then student loans to pay for those drugs!

@ncscswitch:

@Jennifer:

They should be permitted to purchase any legal drugs intended for legal use at bulk discounts.

But that is exactly what the Republican controlled House, Senate, and White House made illegal…
Price negotiation by the government for the price of drugs is ILLEGAL under the law that established Medicare Part D… Bush’s attempt to gain the Senior Vote in 2000 which turned into a pay-off of the pharmecutical companies.

Why else would price negotiation be OUTLAWED?

A)  I’m a moderate, not a Democrat or Republican.  So I’m failing to see why you emphasized what you did, but okay.

B)  A private institution is not the GOVERNMENT.  Private institutions should be allowed to bid for bulk discounts whenever they want too.

C)  If the companies OFFER a discount to the government, that should also be accepted.  What kind of idiotic state would refuse a discount!?!?!?!

@Janus1:

you didn’t say “demon-rat”…maybe you are growing up?  :mrgreen:

I only use the term demon-rat or neonazi when someone refers to republicans as neocons or right wing religious reich.

I put it in General because it effects private institutions, not just politics.  But I guess it would fit in political too.

Anyway, Medicaid is not so much the problem as the free market being prohibited from working.  We’re not talking only state universities that are hamstrung from bartering with pharmecutical companies to get better rates, but also pharmecutical companies are prohibited from even OFFERING the rates as well as students - again - taking it up the who-ha because of some dithering ID10T sitting in a climate controlled office and making decisions without the facts.

Correct me if I’m wrong, Linkon, but if you draw that out further, you’d be in favor of taxing DINKs more heavily then traditional families, because they are financially more healthy and thus can “afford” more taxes?  (DINKs = Double Income, No Kids)

I wouldn’t mind.  A lot of DINK families happen to be very liberal (as in like to spend the government’s money on everything under the sun, probably because they have the time to think of ways to spend the government’s money) while traditional families need more funding from “richer” families for government run day camp, government run schools, government run clinics for children, etc.