RSS
Home
Thank you anti-trust laws for making birth control expensive
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Birth control can be quite expensive. Insurance doesn't cover it. If you're on the average pill, it probably costs about $20 - $30 a month. If you are on the Nuva Ring, which has increased in popularity recently, it can run from $45 - $50 a month. We hate abortions in this country. About 20 percent of the country thinks that a female should have that baby even if she was raped, it was incest, and she is nine years old (no abortion under any circumstances). One would think that this callous hatred for abortion would in turn translate into a support and love fest for birth control as a preventative measure, but that doesn't seem to be the case either, as abstinence-only education continues to flourish.
Enter Wal-Mart, an unlikely good guy amid the folly of the government and the extremism of the people. Wal-Mart, with Target following its lead, decided to offer one-month supplies of generic birth control at a measly $9 a month. Those of you accustomed to normal birth control prices know that this is incredible and fantastic.
However, this plan was quickly quashed by several state anti-trust laws which prohibit the sale of such drugs at below cost. Nine states, including Wisconsin and Minnesota forced Wal-Mart to charge a much higher fee for birth control under the relevant anti-trust statutes. I don't know too much about anti-trust laws, but if public health and consumer benefits mean anything, it seems clear that application of such laws in this circumstance did more harm than good. I dug up this article on birth control only recently (see article here); although its almost 2 years old, I think it raises some interesting issues.
As nationalized, affordable health care has recently become a hot topic, I think it is interesting to point out Target and Wal-Mart as entities trying to achieve the same effect of cheap healthcare that are being hampered by the government. On a positive note, Wal-Mart continues to offer other generic drugs at $4 a month in various locations, as long as it is not "below cost."
Related Articles:
Comments
