Princeton Steps Up.
Maybe it’s Ivy League for a reason.
Princeton University recently decided to help support its students by subsidizing costs for birth control on campus. As opposed to paying up to $50 a month for birth control, students will now be able to access the popular contraception at the cost of $6 per pack.
Rising birth control prices on campuses across America have been making reproductive health less and less accessible to students, causing fear among health care providers that students will stop using prescription birth control methods or will instead turn to less effective contraception such as the morning after pill. The price increase, a side effect of the Deficit Reduction Act issued in 2005, has left many campus health centers helpless in their efforts to cater to their students’ needs. The Deficit Reduction Act, which was part of the Medicaid rebate law that halted pharmaceutical discounting to colleges, went into effect January of this year. However, the burdens of the Act were only felt over the last few months when campus health centers ran out of their stock of the originally cut-rate birth control packs.
By Pooja Awatramani