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Contraceptive crisis: A bigger bill for the Pill
The dramatic increase in the cost of birth control has local clinics predicting dire results from what they call the "pill crisis."
Clinics across the nation took a hit July 1 after top supplier Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceuticals drastically raised the prices on its products without warning. In some cases, birth control pills that had cost a penny a pack jumped to almost $20.
This means health departments in North Carolina might not be able to continue providing birth control methods at no or low cost to some 138,000 uninsured and low-income women.
"It has created huge issues in the public health system," said Marilyn Keefe, vice president for public policy at the National Family Planning Reproductive Health Association.
Keefe said the impact has been nationwide as some states fear a drought in birth control for those women who need it most. That could ultimately end up costing taxpayers more due to the cost on the health care and welfare system of unplanned pregnancies and the resulting children.
"Clinics are trying to do more with less," she said. "The clinics system really can't afford to take a hit on the price of oral contraceptives."
Sydney Atkinson, family planning and reproductive health unit manager for the N.C. Division of Public Health, said the state received $7.2 million this year in funding from the federal government for a program that mandates health departments provide birth control options for those in need. That grant amount isn't nearly enough to cover the price increase, she said.
"In other states, West Virginia, for example, they probably have enough oral contraceptives to last for a month and that's it," Atkinson said. "I wouldn't be surprised if our situation were almost as dire."
In response, her office is attempting to find less-expensive, generic birth control. She still expects those will cost a good deal more than what they were getting from Ortho-McNeil.
Ortho-McNeil released a statement to the media saying the organization is committed to providing birth control options at the lowest cost possible for public health services and that they "are comparatively priced with other hormonal contraceptive options."
That's not good enough for local health department administrators, who worry about how they'll handle the price jump within their tight budgets.
Administrators at Pender and Brunswick County Health Departments said they're waiting to see what prices the state can negotiate and haven't yet figured out how much more it will cost them to keep their programs going.
New Hanover County Health Department already ran the numbers. Kim Roane, its business manager, estimates the yearly cost for Ortho products will increase from $20,831 to $120,890. That doesn't include the birth control the health department buys from other manufacturers, which have also slightly increased in price and affected other area clinics such as Wilmington Health Access for Teens.
"We wouldn't be able to sustain a $100,000 increase without drastically cutting back spending in areas we need to be spending in," Roane said, adding that choices will need to be made.
They won't have to be made soon, though, because the department spent money left over from last year to stock up on birth control before the price increases were announced. The shelves are stocked with an average 13 months supply.
Betty Jo McCorkle, supervisor of clinical services, worries that in the long term the department might not be able to do business the way they've been doing business if the prices can't be negotiated much lower.
Providing written prescriptions to the 2,880 family planning patients the county sees each year would be mostly useless because most can't afford to fill them at local pharmacies.
"Let's hope not," she said. "I know the state is working diligently to protest."