For nearly 20 years, drug companies sold contraceptives to college and low-income health clinics at deeply discounted rates. But a provision of the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act, which took effect in 2006, excluded the centers from low-price eligibility.
The law's "sudden and unexpected" impact sent birth control prices soaring nationwide, said Penn's Women's Health Director Deborah Mathis.
Facing higher bulk costs, clinics had to change their price tags and offerings. Penn students who buy birth control pills from Student Health Services found themselves paying $15 a month instead of $7 - an increase of $96 per year.
NuvaRing now costs $40, Mathis said, and Ortho-Tri-Cyclen Lo, which has no generic brand, was dropped altogether.
Worried that financial burdens would press women to use less preferred medicine or not use it at all, college and health advocacy groups -- including Penn - mobilized to push legislation that would restore discounts. A number of efforts have been made - from free-standing laws to provisions in war spending bills - but so far none have been successful.
Marilyn Keefe, Director of Reproductive Health Programs at the National Partnership for Women and Families, said it's likely that the law's effect on birth control prices was "an inadvertent inclusion" and a simple change in language would restore low prices. But, she added, "opponents of birth control would certainly like to see this [revision] never become law."
Despite national lobbying efforts and SHS's search for lower-cost contracts, Mathis wrote in an e-mail, "It's hard to see prices returning to previous nominal levels." Still, she added, the SHS bulk price for generic brands is "considerably cheaper" than what students would pay at local pharmacies.
Higher costs would likely not stop Penn women from taking the pill, said College junior Rachel Squire, Editor-in-Chief of The F-Word, Penn's feminist literary magazine. Low price is a "bonus," she wrote in an e-mail, but most women understand the risk of unprotected sex.
Where affordable birth control may be even more important, Squire wrote, is at high schools and low-income clinics. "Coupled with increased awareness and availability on campuses, [it] directly reduces unwanted pregnancy," she wrote.
Keefe said Congressional action on family planning services is long overdue - especially with some women paying over $50 a month for contraception. She said advocates hope Congress will restore discounts before the session ends, and if not, they look forward to new representation come November.
"We're disappointed that it hasn't happened yet," she said. "But we're still hopeful."
