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Take
action now.
As people of faith, we are committed to accessible health
care for all, and especially for the most vulnerable. Low-
income and uninsured women need affordable family planning
services. A woman with low income is 4 times as likely to
have an unintended pregnancy, 5 times as likely to have an
unintended birth and 4 times more likely to have an abortion
than a woman with higher income. Unintended pregnancy can
perpetuate poverty, interrupt education and job opportunities,
and create family hardship.
Right now, we are in the thick of a crisis that has diminished
access to birth control and demands our attention… and
thoughtful action. A provision included in the Deficit Reduction
Act of 2005 unintentionally eliminated authorization for pharmaceutical
companies to offer lower priced contraceptives to hundreds
of safety net providers and university clinics. As a result,
the average price of birth control at clinics serving low-income
and uninsured women and students has increased from between
$5 - $10 to $40 - $55.
Nina, One of 3 Million Students Potentially Affected
by Escalating Costs
When Nina Loftspring returned to Indiana University this fall,
she discovered that the birth control that previously cost
$25 at the college health center had more than doubled to
$55. She did the responsible thing and compared prices at
CVS, Planned Parenthood, Walgreen's, and elsewhere and found
that the lowest price was $45, a hefty increase for her. Nina--an
organizer with RCRC's Spiritual
Youth for Reproductive Freedom program--was able to come
up with the additional funds and could travel to a new clinic,
so her prescription has been re-filled. Others were not as
fortunate. One friend who was on hormone replacement therapy
had to drop it because it was now too expensive.
More than 3 million students like Nina and hundreds of thousands
of other low-income women are facing similar situations. The
Prevention Through Affordable Access Act deserves swift passage
to correct this problem of skyrocketing costs. College students
and low-income women should not be priced out of family planning.
Background
For 20 years, Congress has increased access to affordable
prescription drugs at no cost to the federal government by
permitting drug companies to voluntarily offer nominally-priced
drugs to certain health providers. College health centers
could buy prescription drugs, including contraceptives, at
an extraordinary discount of some 90 percent. This arrangement
was not a subsidy and did not cost taxpayers a dime. Rather,
to encourage the pharmaceutical companies to be generous to
certain charitable groups, Congress gave the manufacturers
a limited exemption from Medicaid pricing rules.
Unfortunately, a change made under the Deficit Reduction
Act (DRA of 2005) unintentionally stripped these low-cost
drugs from hundreds of family planning providers and all university
and college health centers—about 1,370 nationwide. Now,
skyrocketing prices are putting birth control out of reach
for more than 3 million college students and hundreds of thousands
of low-income women.
College students and many low-income women have seen their
birth control prices rise from $5 or $10 a month up to $40
or $55. Many clinics stockpiled contraceptives, but reserves
are starting to run out, and prices are shooting up. Some
colleges can no longer afford to carry birth control at all.
Generics are a cheaper option, but still more expensive than
many brand-name contraceptives bought under the old system.
Generics are also not available for many newer products, some
of which use lower hormone levels or do not require women
to take a daily dose.
Additionally, in an effort to preserve low-cost and no-cost
birth control for their low-income patients, safety-net providers
are cutting back on staff, hours of operation, and services.
The consequences of maintaining the DRA’s unintended
restrictions on college clinics and safety-net providers are
grave, beginning with an increase in unintended pregnancies
among college students and low-income women.
Copyright 2005-2007 Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Freedom.
This website is a project of Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Freedom, a program of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC). The contents of this website and linked websites do not necessarily reflect the positions of the RCRC or the member faith groups of the RCRC.
info@syrf.org
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