Colleges nationwide are paying higher prices for birth control, specifically oral contraceptives, after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services decided to impose the regulations of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 onto birth control, according to a notice released by the American College Health Association.
The prices of birth control at AU's Student Health Center will stay the same for the rest of the semester, according to Dan Bruey, director of AU's Student Health Center.
An insurance representative from Aetna, AU's insurance provider, said for a 28-day pack of birth control, students co-pay $20 under the school's plan.
For the remainder of the semester, the Health Center will absorb the extra costs imposed by the law and will maintain current prices for students. Bruey said that over the summer, the Health Center will re-evaluate its methods and come to a decision about how best to meet the needs of students requesting birth control.
The new regulations affect brand name oral contraceptives including Cyclessa, Desogen and NuvoRing, which are all offered by AU. The Health Center has felt the effects of the rising prices, which have doubled and tripled in recent months. Bruey said the Health Center is trying to act as a buffer between the new laws and students.
"Our contracts with our suppliers have increased dramatically in the past month, but we haven't passed those costs onto students," Bruey said. "We want to have the lowest costs possible."
Other universities in the area have been affected in various ways. According to a nurse at the Catholic University of America Health Center, they do not dispense birth control unless it is needed to fix a medical problem. George Mason University, on the other hand, said it felt a greater effect on its Health Center.
"We switched to generic birth control pills," Dr. Abdalla of the George Mason Health Center, said. "The students weren't happy with that, but that was the only way we could offer them cheap birth control."
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services decided to implement the law because of concerns of abuse to clauses in the law that allowed "exclusion from best price of certain sales at nominal price." The clause let medical companies distributing drugs to places serving low-income patients have access to cheaper medicines. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said they believed certain companies were giving these prices to regular hospitals, according to a background sheet from the American College Health Association.
"I feel like the old laws were a good thing because college students need to be responsible and they are poor," Jenny Sparks, a freshman in the School of International Service, said." But the removal makes sense because the demand would bring in more money and that's what [companies] care about."
The American College Health Association wrote a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services asking them to reconsider their decision to remove the American College Health Association from the list. American College Health Association lists over 900 private and public nonprofit universities as members, including AU, in its letter.
In their letter, the American College Health Association noted that the small revenue from oral contraceptives funded programs at universities for sexual health education programs and free sexually transmitted disease testing services. The American College Health Association also said that the increase in prices would put an unnecessary strain on students who are either uninsured or self-insured and have limited means of income.
"Yeah, I'm angry, and I think it's stupid," Lauren Drew, a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, said. "They're supposed to be doing stuff to protect people and this is going in the opposite direction. I understand not putting in measures, but taking out the ones already in place?"
Last school year, 2 percent of the Health Center's 15,373 visits - approximately 300 visits - concerned birth control, according to the Health Center's annual report. The Health Center is in the middle of collecting data for its report for the 2006-2007 school year, according to Bruey.
