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Next month, I'll be putting $38 in my vagina. And I gotta say, my current sex life just isn't worth that much.
Birth control prices have skyrocketed, and the federal government is to blame.
The feds passed the so-called Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 last year, but the effects it has on you, ladies, began in December 2006.Women, our $10-$12.50 a month affordable fee for baby-less sex is now nonexistent, at least without a good insurance plan.You can expect to start paying anywhere from $20-$38 for your birth control if you purchase it from the University Health Center, without insurance here at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and those prices include the generic brands.
This Deficit Reduction Act aims to - well, reduce the country's deficit. The only real thing it's reducing is the ease with which women should be able to obtain birth control.The act, among other things, has decreased the ability for women to obtain birth control and subsequently increased the likelihood of unwanted pregnancies.
Larry Lockhart, the chief pharmacist at the health center, said these changes are a result of the December implementation of the Federal Deficit Reduction Act.
"Basically what the act says is that the drug manufacturers, if they're selling drugs at a discount to specific groups (for us, it would be college students), that the manufacturer of that medicine is required to give that same discount to all federal programs, such as Medicaid and other programs," Lockhart said.
He went on to explain that with these new guidelines in place for discount programs, manufacturers have been either forced to pull out of their already existing discount programs or provide discounts to a greater number of people.
UNL, in particular, is being affected by the drugs that were $10, Lockhart said. "We had four specific contracts - those were all canceled,"
Those four specific contracts were all birth-control-related. Our pharmacy is currently working in conjunction with other universities that have pharmacies on their campuses to reverse this decision and provide students with the discounts once again.
Drug manufacturers could probably afford to give the discounts to a greater number of people, but they have no incentive to do so.
The government, not being dumb (well, that's debatable), knew manufacturers would cancel their contracts and pull out of discount programs. It also knew birth control is one of the main drugs manufacturers discount, especially for students.
This makes the government evil.Students aren't the only ones being affected though. The Deficit Reduction Act also targets recipients of Medicaid and other federally funded programs, like Lockhart said.
Any woman who isn't a member of the white, upper class and great private-insurance-having American structure is now going to struggle to afford contraception.Nerve.com, an online sex and popular culture magazine, notes that "the Senate just passed a $38 billion deficit reduction that dramatically cuts Medicaid and Medicare services."
Although the article, titled, "Barrier Methods: Why It's so Hard to get Birth Control at Planned Parenthood," isn't specific as to what reduction it is referring to, the Feb. 26, 2006, date and mention of Medicaid changes implies the Deficit Reduction Act.
The article continues, "According to The New York Times, 13 million low-income people face new or higher co-payments for medical services. More than 100,000 will lose health care coverage altogether. Federally funded health clinics will have to pick up the slack."It further adds that women are beginning to opt out of using birth control, presumably because of the price increases.
"As a result," the article continues, "women turn to less-effective types of birth control and run a greater risk of unwanted pregnancy."
If the Bush administration's intention is conditioning our population to believe in, live by and support conservative ideology about reproductive rights and sexuality, they better prepare themselves for a whole hell of a lot more people to condition, since so many more people will not be able to afford birth control.
By enforcing things like abstinence-only education, taking steps to reverse the (in)famous Roe v. Wade decision and now making birth control increasingly difficult to get, the government is doing nothing more than asking its population to rebel.
And government, whether you make birth control, abortion or sex education available and/or affordable to us, we are going to have sex.
And $38 in my vagina or not, I'm going to enjoy it, partially just to spite the fools who voted on an act with implications as preposterous as these.
Birth control is a right. It's a right for you, for me, for every woman to choose whether or not she wants sex to lead to pretty little children.So women, here's what we do: we fight; we send e-mails to our congress members; we elect someone intelligent, someone who understands we have a right to sexual health, a right to choose.Part of having that right to choose is having the ability to obtain the necessary means to making that decision, which means being able to afford our contraception.If deficit reduction is what you're looking for, government, try producing less ammunition, stop taking over other countries, send some troops home instead of paying for them to live there.
Let us all go back to putting $12.50, instead of $38, in our vaginas.
