Interesting, I just had mine reduced.

I have seen what MrOuijaAK is saying, having worked at Wal-Mart for two years. It's sad when people complain that they can't buy cigarettes with food stamps. But it happens. It also happens that people don't abuse the system.

What's funny is that everybody thinks it's a direct government subsidy.

The government wants the lowest price offered by the pill manufacturers. This is to obviously prevent fraud. But they used to allow the pill manufacturers to sell to colleges at a lower price. The law change removed this loophole for pill manufacturers.

So it's not really a subsidy, except in a very roundabout way.

Right. Because girls decide how our bodies are going to react to certain birth controls. Most of us can just choose whatever birth control we want, and not have to worry about silly unimportant things such as nausea, and sickness and so forth. Have you ever thought that maybe, just maybe, some of the people on expensive birth control have exhausted all of their other BC options with bad results? The truth of the matter is is that for a LOT of girls, you take what will work with your body. I'm on a generic BC for the most expensive pill I've ever taken in my life (and believe me - it's still expensive), while my friend is fine with her 7$ birth control. Is it MY fault that if I took her BC I'd wake up throwing every morning?

I bet you can scrape together $9 worth of change in a month if it's important I know no matter how broke I have ever been I can always come up with money for cigarettes one way or another.

People who can't switch to a generic might constitute about 0.1% of the people who take BC maybe if it's even that high.

Most girls are on Monophasic birth control of one brand or another without insurance this will run you around $30 a month which yeah is high. Same thing for you progestins. The triphasics are around $35 without insurance. With insurance they should range from $0 to about $15(max) a month. The only class of oral contraceptives without a generic are biphasics and they are no longer sold in the US.

Sorry if my bleeding heart doesn't go out to young college age and low income women who want BC. It's a little more upsetting when I have to turn away elderly patients for their heart medication or watch a woman pay $1700 for an injection for her son. It goes without saying that the whole system needs an overhaul but BC is one of the cheapest monthly drugs available for a somewhat recreational activity. The ability for people to live should come above others ability to fuck. Not that cheap BC isn't awesome but I would sacrifice it pretty quickly in order to help with quality of life issues.

Hell maybe have your boyfriend help pay for it too. Just throwing it out there.

Ladies and gentlemen, let's have a big round of applause for False Dilemma and His Logical Fallacies!

I'm sorry lemme just sum it up real succinctly affordable drug coverage is needed across the board. Birth control certainly doesn't rank highest on the list of medicines that should be subsidized.

Um.... you get paid by the rest of us to live in Alaska, so I'd really shut the fuck up with this bullshit.

seriously, women need to just get on the ball wth thier birth control. if that means working an extra two hours a month, then im fine with that, i mean, a guy has to buy them drinks at the bar, in order for them to get to use thier birth control. women are all such whiners anyway, first its drinks and dinner, then its birth control pills, then its money for a doctor fro thier kid, and then its alimony. why cant they pullthemselves up by thier high heels?

That's still a logical fallacy, since the federal program in question is not a subsidy, nor does it preclude other prescription drugs being subsidized.

Also, saying that only prescription drugs that have a certain rank on your arbitrary list should be subsidized is pretty ludicrous, as is attaching value judgments onto what medications people have been prescribed.

If drug coverage is needed "across the board" then birth control would rank right alongside everything else.

After reading this thread, It appears that stupid pills are still relatively cheap and abundant.

Alright how arbitrary is this? Antibiotics or Birth Control, Seizure medication or Birth Control, anti-arrhythmic drugs or Birth Control, medication to prevent organ rejection or Birth Control? You're going to have a hard time convincing me that birth control goes above any of those others and it's not like the list stops there either how about super expensive cancer and AIDS medications. I know my "arbitrary" rating system really sounds batshit crazy. I obviously didn't think that one out before I said it.

If nothing is being subsidized how are the medications getting cheaper? I'd be pretty shocked if asking the pharmaceutical industry is all that it took. I don't think it prevents other medicines from being cheaper but the money has to come from somewhere.

How about "all of the above"?

If you're saying that what you deem to be important prescription drugs should be affordable "across the board", you better come up with a better reason for allowing something as widely prescribed as hormonal birth control to somehow not be included other than "I don't wanna".

The federal program mentioned in this article is not a subsidy.