Across the country, seemingly with no warning, students are being asked to pay often double what they paid last year for birth control. In many cases, this increase was dramatic and not likely to change anytime soon. When members of our Students for Choice group came back to campus in Montana this fall, they immediately went to find out if they were going to be affected.
At U of M's campus, the cost of the Nuva Ring has already doubled from $18 a month to $36, and unless there is a fix nationally, other birth control options are likely to do the same in January going from $20/month to $50.
Here's the deal: the Deficit Reduction Act, a federal bill that went into affect in January of this year, had the inadvertent effect of raising the prices of birth control. In turn, college clinics and other family-planning clinics were no longer able to receive the discounts they used to receive from pharmaceutical companies. Many of the women who rely on these clinics for contraception are students or low-income women, and now they may not be able to afford birth control.
Here are some real-life examples of the affects of the birth control cost increase:
?According to an article in NewWest.net: the Health Service Pharmacy in the Curry Health Center is able to offer it's students Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo at $20/pack until the end of the fall semester, but after Christmas, it could raise to $40 or $50/pack. The NuvaRing has already doubled in price.
?The NewWest.net article also goes on to say, in several rural Montana towns including Choteau, Fort Benton, Culbertson, and Poplar, the only place where low-income women can go to get discounted birth control is their local Planned Parenthood clinic. However, unlike the Planned Parenthood clinics in Helena, Missoula, or Great Falls, clinics in these rural areas, as well as the clinics in Kalispell and Billings, are not designated Title X, meaning that they do not get federal funding.
We all agree that there are myriad problems with the birth control price increase.
Congress should be making it easier, not harder, for women to have access to affordable contraception and NARAL Pro-Choice Montana is doing everything it can to make sure it stays that way.
