Activists Call Out Congress on its Mishaps
December 06, 2007 12:23:00
by Anna
Web Correspondent
Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota Action Fund
It's kind of frightening how a piece of seemingly unexcited legislation can fly through Congress without a second thought and wind up at the forefront of reproductive rights concerns a few months or years later. I guess I wouldn't have read the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 cover to cover either, but then again, I'm not paid to do that sort of thing.
I wrote in mid-October about this bill, a complex piece of legislation that was passed in 2006 and went into affect this past January. Its purpose was to reform Medicaid rebate policies, but somewhere in the fine print it also altered birth control laws so that pharmaceutical companies can no longer sell reduced-cost birth control to university health centers and clinics supporting low-income women. No one really noticed at first.
Now, though, everyone is noticing. It's kind of hard not to when you have to pay $40 or $50 a month for birth control as opposed to $5 or $10. One specific concern is that rising birth control prices will encourage more women to depend on less reliable forms of birth control like condoms and dental dams, which could lead to more unwanted pregnancies. Activists and university health workers have brought the problem to the legislature's attention. On November 1, Democratic New York representative Joseph Crowley introduced the Prevention Through Affordable Access Act, a bill cosponsored by more than 100 Congressmen, including Minnesota's own Jim Ramstad (R), Betty McCollum (D), Tim Walz (D), and Keith Ellison (D) and over 20 Senators, including Minnesota's Amy Klobuchar (D). This bill would drop birth control prices for college clinics and clinics like Family Tree that provide low-cost contraceptives.
One barrier to having this legislation passed in a timely manner is Congress's upcoming holiday recess. Since pretty much everyone has a bill that's been vegetating somewhere in the Capitol, and since they all want their legislation dusted off and taken care of before the break, we can't be certain that the Affordable Access Act will advance anytime soon. Activists are taking an aggressive the-sooner-the-better stance, fearing that next year's presidential elections will polarize Congress even more and jeopardize the bipartisan agreement the bill needs to pass, but all the lobbying they can muster is still no guarantee.
Personally, I think the concept of this bill is ironic. Its grandiose title suggests something new and exciting and its substantial support in Congress implies enthusiasm to further its cause, when in fact Congress is the reason this whole mess came up in the first place. This isn't a personal judgment on any particular Congressperson, just a suggestion that maybe the people we elect as our representatives should pay more heed to exactly what it is they're legislating in order to ensure that it really does adhere to the preferences of those they speak for.
The most important thing, though, is that this mistake is no longer going unchecked. If activists and universities continue to push the issue as they have been, I'm hopeful that we will see this problem alleviated, if not before the holiday recess, then in the only slightly more distant future. And in all honesty, it'd be silly for Congress not to fix this mistake. It's a true technical fix and it won't cost them a dime.
