montana healthcare

Birth Control Costs Rise for College Students, Low-Income Women

By Emily Darrell, 9-17-07

By the end of this year the cost of contraceptives may increase dramatically for both rural, low-income women and for college students. The reason? The Deficit Reduction Act, a bill that was approved by the U.S. Congress in 2006 and took effect this past January. The purpose of the bill was to restrain federal spending, particularly in regards to Medicare and Medicaid.

One of the consequences of the bill is that, nationwide, college clinics, Planned Parenthoods and other health care providers are no longer receiving the deep discounts on hormonal birth control that pharmaceutical companies had long offered to them, and have no choice but to pass the price increases along to patients.

While many pharmacies, including the pharmacy at University of Montana’s Curry Health Center, had the foresight to stockpile the most popular types of birth control while they still had their discount privileges, supplies are dwindling.

Ken Chatriand, manager of the Health Service Pharmacy in the Curry Health Center, said the clinic probably has enough packs of its most popular pill, Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo, to offer it to students for $20 a pack through the end of the fall semester, but that after Christmas it will become considerably more expensive, possibly as pricey as $40 or $50 a pack. The price of the NuvaRing, another popular hormonal contraceptive choice at Curry, has already doubled in price from $18 a month to $36.

Chatriand said the pharmacy will do as much as it can to cut its cost so that it can increase its contraceptive prices as little as possible. According to Chatriand, some types of pills such as Desogen saw only a modest price increase of a few dollars, but he acknowledges it’s not always easy for a woman to switch from their preferred brand because hormones can react differently with each woman’s body chemistry and can cause different side effects in different patients. “For some females there’s only one type [of hormonal contraceptive] that works for them,” Chatriand said.

Although the increase of birth control prices for college students has made headlines recently in Time (here), the Boston Globe (here), and various college papers, the impact that the deficit will have on rural women living at or near the poverty level has garnered much less attention.

In several rural Montana towns including Choteau, Fort Benton, Culbertson, and Poplar—where 31 percent of the population is living below poverty level and a quarter of the residents are unemployed—the only place where low-income women can go to get discounted birth control is their local Planned Parenthood clinic. However, unlike the Planned Parenthood clinics in Helena, Missoula, or Great Falls, clinics in these rural areas, as well as the clinics in Kalispell and Billings, are not designated Title X, meaning that they do not get federal funding. According to the website of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Title X is the only federal grant program dedicated solely to providing individuals with comprehensive family planning and related preventive health services. The Title X program is designed to provide access to contraceptive services, supplies and information to all who want and need them. By law, priority is given to persons from low-income families.”

Stacey Anderson, the Director of Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood of Montana, said that, like the Curry Health Center Pharmacy, Montana Planned Parenthood clinics stocked up on discounted contraceptives and believes that the supplies will last several more months. Anderson hopes that before this supply is depleted federal legislation and pharmaceutical companies will resume offering them contraception on the cheap.

Anderson has been working with Planned Parenthood officials from across the nation, as well as with college and women’s advocacy groups, and with Montana Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester and Gov. Brian Schweitzer to help change legislation.

She said that Baucus, Tester, and Schweitzer all “understand the importance of family planning” and would like to ensure that low-income women in all parts of Montana have access to affordable birth control. Anderson knows that changing a piece of national legislation is not a piece of cake, especially as birth control “can be very politically charged in regards to this administration.” But, she said, “We’re confident that we’re working as hard as we can.”

While women who qualify as low-income and live in cities with Title X-supported Planned Planned clinics will still be able to get free or very inexpensive birth control, Anderson worries about the low-income women who live in areas where there isn’t a Title X clinic, and what will happen to them if legislation does not change. She said that around 1,400 women would be impacted immediately.

Anderson asked, “If you’re uninsured, if you’re the working poor, where do you go?”

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