the pharmacy at my school has had a sign posted about this for a couple of months. it says that it's happening because the drug companies are no longer giving them the big discounts that allow the student pharmacies to let women get BC at 1/2 to 1/8 of the retail price.

now who wants to guess why the drug companies are cancelling the lovely deal they used to give?

Completely unaware of the price change in the USA, I just wrote about "learning about family planning from Iran." One thing they did was make all contraceptives free. If Iran can do it, so can we.

http://tinyurl.com/35god7

the senator from texas should subsidize this birth control. two birds, one stone!

"One thing they did was make all contraceptives free."

Not *all* of them. If you want the mint-flavored condoms Keyhan Bod makes instead of the plain ones, you have to buy them at the convenience store instead of getting them for free at the doctor's office.

now who wants to guess why the drug companies are cancelling the lovely deal they used to give?

I'll take that one! Because changes in the Medicaid law make it financially less feasible for pharmaceutical companies to give huge discounts to college campuses and get a rebate from the State for other drugs.

Yeah, nothing anti-woman about it. There's no real right to below-market birth control - sorry.

That all said, it would be nice if MEN were to pick up some of the tab. I know that women feel awkward about asking, but why should it be our bodies that get the hormones and the side effects, our responsibility to take it every day, AND our pocketbooks that take the hit?

I struggled with this one for a while.

Why should we be responsible for the pill? 99.99% of time we are expected to be the ones responsible for BC.

The big issue is why incentives arent made to provide BC to women on campus. If BC was plentiful and cheap, I would expect to see a decline in pregnancies midway through school.

It would only seem sensible, that since this would be the most important achievement for most 18-25 year olds, that a simple protection like this would be given to help ensure completion. Actually, it would make sense to give incentives for women to practice responsible sex/contraceptive habits.

While there may be no civil right to below market BC costs, it seems logical and sensible to do so to this specific demographic.

Creativity, it is said, thrives on messiness, a touch of disorder or even an element of chaos. The unfinished waiting to be finished. But too much untidiness does not attract all types. Not the lawyers, the bankers, the property developers, most media types or their families. It is these people who in many contexts can drive the urban transformation agenda and create the confidence and positive investment climate. They are not renowned for their creativity and its uncertainties. In fact they probably want nearly the opposite.

Messiness is also uncomfortable for many others: ordinary hospital workers, teachers and shopkeepers, to name a few. They want ‘liveability’ or ‘quality of life’, two catchphrases of the moment. That agenda focuses on safety, cleanliness and good transport. Within the new competitiveness paradigm both the creativity and liveability agendas need to be aligned. And they can be. Thinking about unusual crime reduction schemes is an example, as is creating urban hubs that act as havens, like Bryant Park in New York, or coming up with the idea of the mid-level escalators as a form of public transport in Hong Kong.

Overall urban competitiveness cannot survive today only on refurbished warehouses with their creative economy types and office parks in idealized green settings. It needs the public spaces in between, the good transport links and a sense of relative safety – only with a slight touch of edginess.