Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Deficit Reduction Act Placing Damper on Pill Prices

Huh? How the heck does the Deficit Reduction Act effect your pill prices? Well, lets see.

In the Deficit Reduction Act, which went into effect in January, Congress inadvertently changed a rule and made it harder for universities and some safety net family planning providers to provide their patients with affordable birth control.

Birth control is essential to helping women and couples plan healthy families. Access to affordable birth control depends on three factors — like a three-legged stool. The first leg consists of providers like Planned Parenthood that offer a safety net for high-quality, affordable family planning. The second leg consists of the responsible drug companies that provide cost-effective birth control to safety net providers. And the third and equally vital leg is Congress, when it prioritizes pro-family planning laws and policies and makes women’s reproductive health a public health priority.

Congress wants to change the drug-pricing laws that enable the nation's most needy women and couples to access birth control services from safety net providers like Planned Parenthood. Congress needs to hold up its leg of the stool by fixing the Deficit Reduction Act.

U.S. News and World Report recently published an interesting article on how the DRA is effecting pill prices on campus.

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