Friday, July 27, 2007

condom sense

The latest brought to you by the party of theocracy:
College students returning to campus in a few weeks will be greeted by steep increases in one of the few items they have been able to buy cheap: birth control.

For years, drug companies sold birth-control pills and other contraceptives to university health services at a big discount. This has served as an entree to young consumers for the drug companies, and a profit center for the schools, which sell them to students at a moderate markup. Students pay perhaps $15 a month for contraceptives that otherwise can retail for $50 or more.

But colleges and universities say the drug companies have stopped offering the discounts, and are now charging the schools much more. The change has an unlikely origin: the Deficit Reduction Act signed by President Bush last year. The legislation aimed to pare $39 billion in spending on federal programs, from subsidized student loans to Medicaid. And among the changes was one that, through an arcane set of circumstances, created a disincentive for drug makers to offer school discounts.

Because if we make safe sex more expensive, college students will stop having sex! That's what's gonna happen, right? Guys?

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