Due to cutbacks in funding certain birth control options have been priced so high that purchasing them from Student Health Services isn’t practical. “Even brand name medications from student insurance is thirty dollars at the pharmacy. We would have to charge even more than that, so it became kind of stupid for us to charge them even more than the insurance company would charge them. They’re obtainable, it’s just very expensive [here].” Said, Jessica Lettow, director of Student Health Services. The reason for the increase in price is that Universty health services were removed from Medicare pricing.
The rescinded subsidy applies to all brand name contraceptives that do not have a generic equivalent. Among these are the Nuvaring, a contraceptive marketed as a once-a-month alternative to the pill. The Ortho-evra patch as well as Ortho tri-cyclen lo, a pill that delivers a lower amount of hormones. Before January of this year the Nuvaring cost $3, Ortho try-cyclen $5 and the patch $30. Student health services now only carries generic options for $12 a month, “we have a lot of generic options, but unfortunately it’s all pills. The things that were brand name, the new hot of the presses items were different delivery methods, such as the patch and ring.”
The price increase can be is due to the Deficit Reduction Act sign last year. The legislation made it more costly for drug manufacturers to offer low-cost hormonal birth control to college health clinics. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid then issued new policies that dropped all University clinics from a list of agencies that could be sold discounted drugs from drug companies.