Pricey birth control pills at Princeton

"A bitter pill," Jason Sheltzer, The Daily Princetonian

Ortho-McNeil, the primary manufacturer of oral contraception in the United States, approved an 1,800-fold increase in the price at which it sold birth control to family planning clinics. While Ortho-McNeil had once charged clinics around a penny a pack, under its new pricing scheme clinics would have to pay up to $18 for a month's supply of birth control per person. Under the old price, clinics like Planned Parenthood could distribute pills to women who lacked health insurance for next to nothing. The cost hike forced clinics to raise their own prices beyond the means of many of the poor and uninsured women that the clinics catered to...

Oral contraception allows women to have complete control over their bodies and their future. It gives women the sexual freedom that men have always had, and there's the rub. UHS considers oral contraception to be a "lifestyle" drug that isn't medically necessary. In the 2006-2007 Student Health Plan Benefits Summary, oral contraception is excluded from coverage in the same clause in which "drugs used for cosmetic purposes or for weight loss" are excluded.