Price cut neededfor campus birth control

When Congress returns from its Thanksgiving break, it needs to pass a technical fix that will return the cost of birth control dispensed at college health centers to reasonable levels.

Young women who are accustomed to obtaining oral contraceptives for $3 to $10 a month at their campus clinics are now facing fees of $40 to $50 a month. Such a price increase is sure to result in some young women taking their chances with less reliable forms of contraception or forgoing it altogether.

These drugs were offered cheaply because of long-standing agreements with pharmaceutical companies that allowed college health clinics and others serving low income populations to purchase brand-name oral contraception at deep discounts. That came to a halt in January when the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 went into effect.

Here is what happened: Drug companies are required to offer state Medicaid programs their "best" price. But the law had always recognized an exception when companies offered their drugs at nominal prices to safety net health care providers.

Congress started tinkering with the nominal price exception because evidence had emerged that pharmaceutical companies were using it in ways to benefit themselves rather than the public. But in closing the loophole, lawmakers failed to make clear that the exemption would still hold for college and community health centers.

Now stockpiles of brand-name oral contraceptions at the cheaper prices are reportedly exhausted, or nearly so, and cash-strapped young women are being asked to pay the higher prices. Many of these women may still be on a parent's health insurance plan but for privacy reasons may not want to gain access to contraception that way.

There is an easy fix, and it won't cost taxpayers a thing. One way is for Michael Leavitt, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, to simply issue a definition of "safety net provider" that includes these clinics, making them eligible for the nominal price exception. That isn't likely, given that the Bush administration is so anticontraception. So that leaves it to Congress to repair the law, and bills to do just that have been introduced in the House and Senate. Now the Democratically controlled Congress just has to get them passed by a veto-proof vote.

[Last modified November 26, 2007, 21:54:11]