All year I've been seeing these stories about dastardly pharma companies, who have inexplicably and meanly jacked up prices for college students. This seemed odd, though it was hard to work up too much sympathy, since $50 a month is less than what your average college student spends on bad beer. But I should have known that there was a government regulation behind the sudden change.
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Megan-
Don't neglect the "entitlement mentality"...
I laughed while I read an article today about students possibly 'scalping' tickets at Ohio State for the BCS.
'Chad Farley wished Ohio State could have offered a reduced price to students. "I don't know anyone with that kind of money," said Farley, a 28-year-old education major from Huber Heights.'
$50 a month in bad beer will get you beer every single night. If you got laid every night in college, well, wow. I mean, I presume the enjoyment of the pill comes not from actually eating it, but from what it allows you to do.
This issue is certainly another political rhorschach test. To a liberal, it looks like the villain is conservative politicos so leery of anything with the words "birth control" attached to it that they won't put through an amendment to allow campus clinics to get the pills at the manufacturer's discount rate. So my solution would be "because college students are getting birth control price hikes, the conservatives should stop grandstanding and let campus clinics get the Medicaid-price discount drug exemption like all those other clinics". To a libertarian, the solution is "because college students are getting birth control price hikes, we should end Medicaid." Or the institution of government? Or something?
People pay for beer in college?
Fletch,
What are you attempting to imply? I can say for certainty that, as a 33 year old university student, I would have an extremely hard time buying tickets at the prices listed in said article.
brooksfoe-
$50 a month in bad beer will get you beer every single night.
Where? I'm currently spending $50/wk on PBR...
Mason-
What are you attempting to imply? I can say for certainty that, as a 33 year old university student, I would have an extremely hard time buying tickets at the prices listed in said article.
As would the average 8 yr old...
I'll repeat myself-- This is a 28 yr old man who apparently cannot raise $175 (student price) -- while the State is 'subsidizing' his education at more than $5K/yr...
Again! This is a 28 yr old man (education major!)... who thinks he deserves a "special discount"-- because Mommy, Daddy, and the "taxpayers" are probably paying his entire tuition...
Brooksfoe, but that's simply an inaccurate belief. This was a case of the Democrats in Congress being paranoid that pharmaceutical companies were giving discounts as "promotions" rather than charity. The Republicns don't control congress any more; it's time to give credit where credit is due.
Fletch -
You know nothing about this person. He might very well have gone to work after high school and now be working to put himself through school. He might very well be a military veteran going back to school on the GI bill. If his parents were paying his tuition he'd be more likely to be able to afford the ticket, not less. Besides that, there are many, many working people, let alone people working their way through school, who couldn't afford to pay $175 for a ticket to a sporting event. I make good money and that would be major outlay even for me. And even if this guy is being supported by his parents, which you don't know, all he's doing is wishing his school offered a student price. He's not demanding anything. In short, I think your comment is nasty, your contempt is unjustified, and I'll take Chad over you any day of the week. Jackass.
I have no problem with offering discounted pills on campus. However, those of us who went to Catholic colleges -- which typically don't offer birth control at ANY price -- know of another solution. Mail order discounters will ship anywhere, even to rural campuses. I paid about $30 for a three-month supply of birth control pills, and that wasn't very long ago. It was the full price, by the way... no subsidy from my insurance. You do need a prescription, of course, but I assume most campus health centers (at least at non-Catholic schools) will provide one.
I say we discount the beer, then we'd get better value for our birth control dollar.
All this concern over female college students who can't get cheap birth control pills, yet no concern at all for the vast numbers of male college students for whom the issue of contraception is utterly irrelevant because they can't get sex at all. No one in Congress or elsewhere cares a whit about young men who happen to be nerdy/non-athletes/non-fratboys and therefore can't get the time of day from the very same young women who whine about having to pay more for contraception.
Megan: What's wrong with regulatory control of prices? Isn't this regulation protecting us from unpredictable spikes and drops in price that would destroy the certainty we crave as consumers?
To be blut, why are you sarcastically criticizing price controls by the government, but in complete, docile acceptance of the Fed's controls on the "price" of a dollar?
I'm not sure this should count as a government "regulation." It's effectively a contractual term. The Government is the largest buyer of pharmaceuticals (including, probably, these products). As a condition of buying from the pharmaceutical companies, the Government has implemented a term requiring the drug companies to give the Government its lowest price. The Government doesn't forbid the pharma companies from offering discounts to college students, low-income clinics, or anyone else. The Government just insists that it get a discount as big as anyone else's. I would bet that Wal-Mart has the same contract term with hundreds or thousands of its suppliers.
Now, you may think it was wrong for the Government to get into the pharmaceutical-buying business in the first place -- but it's a stretch to say that their staying out of the market would increase the availability of contraceptives.
Every once in a while, it's a good idea to take one's knee-jerk anti-Government bromides and consider whether or not they actually fit the case at hand...
"it's a stretch to say that [governments'] staying out of the market would increase the availability of contraceptives."
Not so in the case of drug manufacturers and other patent-dependent businesses.
Once a drug is developed, production costs are very low. So pricing of individual units can be extremely flexible, as long as R&D is recovered from someplace.
The government first protects the company with a monopoly. Then it negotiates a super-low price for selected beneficiaries.
Finally, the drug company recoups its R&D costs and makes its profits via monopoly pricing on those not given the benefits of the government program.
So yes, those cheaper drugs for college students are directly affecting the cost of drugs to us, because the manufacturer is passing a greater proportion of the R&D costs on to us.
Peter, I don't know if you're being serious, but:
Refusal to address inequality in access to sex, seriously does cause me to question the sincerity and nobility of egalitarians.
Mason wrote: What are you attempting to imply? I can say for certainty that, as a 33 year old university student, I would have an extremely hard time buying tickets at the prices listed in said article.
Oh crap, Julia, I think they're onto us. Off to Room 101 in the Ministry of Love we go...
stoneyforest wrote: You know nothing about this person. He might very well have gone to work after high school and now be working to put himself through school. He might very well be a military veteran going back to school on the GI bill. If his parents were paying his tuition he'd be more likely to be able to afford the ticket, not less. Besides that, there are many, many working people, let alone people working their way through school, who couldn't afford to pay $175 for a ticket to a sporting event. I make good money and that would be major outlay even for me. And even if this guy is being supported by his parents, which you don't know, all he's doing is wishing his school offered a student price. He's not demanding anything. In short, I think your comment is nasty, your contempt is unjustified, and I'll take Chad over you any day of the week. Jackass.
I love Big Brother.
er, yeah, because millions of normal working people, don't actually have to pay full price for birth control... oh, wait...
If the pharma companies want to give a discount to college students, fine... but the government doesn't need to be involved.
This was a case of the Democrats in Congress being paranoid that pharmaceutical companies were giving discounts as "promotions" rather than charity. - Megan
What? Did we read the same article? I think dcuser has it right: Medicaid got a best-price guarantee from drug manufacturers. Then the concern was that this would crowd out some really cheap discounts for markets that can't afford to pay more -- i.e. virtuous price discrimination (nothing to do with "charity") -- because the drug companies would stop offering the discounts if they had to offer the same price to Medicaid. So exceptions were inserted in legislation, but the legislators just forgot to include campus clinics. Now Democrats are trying to amend the legislation to include campus clinics, but Republicans won't let the riders go through because they're either genuinely opposed or leery for political reasons of appearing to approve discount birth control for college students -- even if it's not actually costing taxpayers a dime. So the solution is for the Republicans to stop being asses and let the riders go through, full stop. What other remedy do you propose?
'This was a case of the Democrats in Congress being paranoid that pharmaceutical companies were giving discounts as "promotions" rather than charity. The Republicns don't control congress any more; it's time to give credit where credit is due.'
Republicans controlled Congress when the bill was passed, and have been obstructing passage of a remedy. Though I believe it was bipartisan - Democrats didn't want medicaid to subsidize college students, and Republicans wanted less spending.
And rightly so, anony-mouse. Now let's have no more of this thoughtcrime.
Government subsidized BCPs for college women sounds like the perfect wedge issue for a Republican consultant - There is a complete - near complete - dichotomy of opinion between the Democractic leaning Idea Class Vs. the rest of the population who thinks college kids are coddled and libertine.
Can you imagine how much Huckabee would love to be shouted down by some feminist group demanding cheap pills? O'reilly would proceed to link it too Girls Gone Wild etc
All this concern over female college students who can't get cheap birth control pills, yet no concern at all for the vast numbers of male college students for whom the issue of contraception is utterly irrelevant because they can't get sex at all. No one in Congress or elsewhere cares a whit about young men who happen to be nerdy/non-athletes/non-fratboys and therefore can't get the time of day from the very same young women who whine about having to pay more for contraception.
I surely hope this is satire. Otherwise, do you have any idea how stupid it sounds?
Gee, they can't get any sex at all! Poor, poor babies!
How about oral sex? Last I heard, that doesn't result in conception.
How about just a friendly hand for that matter, if you think you're that hard up?
Somehow, I don't think any deaths have resulted from "nookie denial." Also, there's always wet dreams.
Government subsidized BCPs for college women sounds like the perfect wedge issue for a Republican consultant
Yeah, it might be, if there were any government subsidies involved here. But there aren't. The issue is a discount normally provided by drug manufacturers for their own profit-seeking reasons, but which government regulations currently PROHIBIT them from offering to college clinics.
Then again, it might be a good wedge issue for Republican consultants anyway, if they're targeting that part of the Republican base which is too stupid to be able to read a newspaper article and understand the content.
All this concern over female college students who can't get cheap birth control pills, yet no concern at all for the vast numbers of male college students for whom the issue of contraception is utterly irrelevant because they can't get sex at all. No one in Congress or elsewhere cares a whit about young men who happen to be nerdy/non-athletes/non-fratboys and therefore can't get the time of day from the very same young women who whine about having to pay more for contraception.
I surely hope this is satire. Otherwise, do you have any idea how stupid it sounds?
Gee, they can't get any sex at all! Poor, poor babies!
No, it is not satire. Any female college student who is even remotely decent-looking has almost unlimited access to casual sex if she wants. In contrast, male student who aren't lucky enough to be athletes or fratboys have to scuffle around for whatever they can get, which usually means nothing. It's simple evolutionary biology. Sperm is cheap and superabundant, eggs are scarce and costly, so females - of any species, humans included - choose only the fittest males with whom to mate. This carries over even to casual sex among humans where no reproduction is sought. As a result, a small percentage of men, the Alpha Males, monopolize a huge percentage of the females.
stoneyforest-
You know nothing about this person. He might very well have gone to work after high school and now be working to put himself through school. He might very well be a military veteran going back to school on the GI bill. If his parents were paying his tuition he'd be more likely to be able to afford the ticket, not less. Besides that, there are many, many working people, let alone people working their way through school, who couldn't afford to pay $175 for a ticket to a sporting event.
All your potential "scenarios" cannot change the "real" story! I'll repeat the facts--0 a 28 yr old "education major" expects a 'discount' on tickets to a sporting event---- merely because he's a 'student'!
This is a person who has supposedly been an "adult" for more than ten years- yet, still expects "somebody else" to 'pay his way'...
brooksfoe-
...because the drug companies would stop offering the discounts if they had to offer the same price to Medicaid. So exceptions were inserted in legislation, but the legislators just forgot to include campus clinics.
"Did you hear about Ronald Reagan's new plan to eliminate 'teen pregnancy'"?
"Hey, girls... Suck more dick"! (Richard Belzer-1981)
closing my tag...
Peter:
You have got to be frakking kidding me. What a load of nonsense.
Why don't you try reading this (Alpha Male Mythology) and this (On Alpha Males and Roaming Inseminators). I particularly like this quote from the latter article:
What Angier and de Waal teach us is that we need to examine the implicit beliefs of the biologically-based point of view and understand how gender shapes the very frameworks in which we understand the assumptive “objectivity” of biology. Many sociobiological works are found in the Biology section of the bookstore rather than somewhere that identifies the claims as social theorizing, and often the lay public cannot distinguish between the two nor generate alternative hypotheses to those presented. People are likely to accept these hypotheses as fact, and therefore popular conceptions of Alpha Male and Roving Inseminator remain both cause and effect of toxic conceptions of masculinity.
If that's your conception of "masculinity," it is indeed toxic.