Share Your Story: What does birth control without co-pays mean for you?
Has cost ever kept you from using the method of birth control that’s best for you? Has it forced you to make tough choices, like going without birth control or even delaying paying a bill so you can afford it?
Thanks to the health care law, new insurance plans are required to cover birth control and other women’s preventive health services with no co-payments or deductibles at the start of their next plan year. As more health plans come under the law’s reach, more and more women will be able to keep their wallets closed when they pick up their birth control.
Tell us — what does it mean to you that you will soon get birth control with no co-pays or deductibles?
Please note: The views expressed in the stories below are those of the authors themselves and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the National Women's Law Center. All statements of fact in these stories have been provided by the individual authors, and the National Women's Law Center cannot and does not vouch for their accuracy. The Center will compile the stories and may use them, in whole or in part, in our advocacy efforts.
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Your Stories
Richard Adam Hendricks
Webster, New York,
No matter where are oppinions varie, we will have democraziced birth control whether those religious right hate-mongers and their friends from high places like it or not. Yes everyone, there will be a time that birth control will be 100% accepted by all walks of life--without religious intolerance and institutional hate--so we Americans will see that it stays that way for all of eternity. There are a set of highly important reasons why birth control is so important in this day and age, as they include. Birth control is a safe medical practice that can not only relieve overcrowding in various communities everywhere, but can improve society and people's lives as well. You think birth control is a practice done only in Communist or Islamic countries, then you are dead wrong. Birth control has proved to work just as great and successful in a democracy and their have been hardly any controversy about it. And must we remind ourselves that we are facing an overpopulation crises around the world? Well it's true, and birth control is just one of a few great remedies that could help relieve us from overpopulation. Oh yes, for those right-wing attacks on birth control, this results in a serious threat on human rights and it has to stop right now whether both those right-wing bigots or hate institutions alike like it or not. They even said the same thing about gun control nearly 55 years ago, but when crime rates increased in the free world in the 1960's and 1970's, that is when gun control was welcomed by democratic governments and put into law, so as a result, gun control was hailed as another way on severely cutting down homicides. Especially in places like Europe, where gun control is an important way of life, it still works just as great as ever in not only preventing gun violence, but keeping their people safe from homicides as well. We all know that the United States will never have gun control, we Americans will gracefully embrace birth control as a premier solution in preventing unwanted births and used as another way in improving our communities. Birth control will not only be greatly welcomed in Africa and the United States, but it will be dramatically approved on every continent on the globe with great fundemental success. Now let's have a clear view on what birth control will give to all of us and the economic- social benifits it will give us, that way we will all have a better understanding on the best birth control has to offer. A healthy majority of Americans just happens to support birth control, so this indicates as another hard reason why we need birth control and how much we understand about the true life-improving facts we know about birth control. Many from the rest of the world will agree that birth control is a safe and highly successful medical practice that poses no threat to the social or economic fabric of our daily life, so their is no denying it. We just have to have a bright and honest view of birth control--and especially the good it provides to all of us.
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Erika Hunt
, Arizona,
Having to not worry if I can afford birth control would be huge. I am thankfully on an IUD, but it took a payment plan to get it.
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Florence Eaise
Oaklyn, New Jersey, Homemaker
I am a 40 year old divorced mother with three beautiful daughters, ages, 16,20 and 21. Birth control withoutco-pays means "EVERYTHING" to me and my girls! Even with medical insurance, and good medical insurance too, our co-pays for the gynocological visits were $25.00 per person, per visit! It would cost $100.00 for me and my 3 daughters to get an exam not to mention the over $30 to fill birth control prescriptions (my insurance doesnt cover birth control), so thats $220 all together for me and my daughters to see the gyno, and get prescriptions filled! Ive had to many times skip my gyno visit so i could afford both the visits and birth control prescriptions for my girls, and at 40 thats NOT safe! Birth control without co-pays means that i will be able to afford to also be seen at the gyno for the first time in over 5 years, and it also means that my daughters will never have to worry about making a decision to NOT be seen at the gyno because they cant afford it! Thanks to ALL who helped this pass by signing petitions advocating and spreading the word and mostly thanks to the National Womens Law Center for getting the message out there and helping the birth control without co-pay to even come about!!!
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angie
belpre, ohio, pt-retail
I don't have insurance but rely on state funded or planned parenthood for my pills. Without them my life would be pure misery, with extreme pain, migrains, uncontrolable cravings, (not good with blood sugar issues) and almost violent frustration. And then there are the mental issues in the week after that are not controlable by anti-depressants. I have a constant conversation in the back of my head. During the week after and any time that I become overly stressed and can't get enough sleep that conversation gets very loud and becomes a discussion of suicide. Three weeks out of every month I can't think, am miserable and pretty much useless. I now only take three weeks of the pills so that I no longer have a period because it was almost as bad as not being on the pill! I wonder how many other women are in the same situation that have to have them to have a half way normal life and not be on disibality. I wonder if the government has any clue how many of us are able to work (on the pill) and pay taxes instead of having to be on some sort of welfare and basically incompasitated without them! Thank you for letting me vent! lol Sincerely, Angie
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Richard Adrian Nelson, Jr.
Santa Barbara, CA, retired
I believe that if the U.S. is truly committed to universal health care, that the universal aspect should extend to ALL aspects of health, which includes reproductive choice.
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Robert Duke
Charlottesville, Virginia,
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Ilyssa Silfen
Staten Island, New York, Graduate Student
Co-pay free birth control means saving money for things that I'm going to need to further my career, such as books, tuition money, etc. Co-pay free birth control means makign it easier and less expensive for me to be 99.9% sure every month that I'm not pregnant (I'm childfree by choice for life). Co-pay free birth control means finally being on equal footing with men, whose Viagra is fully covered by their insurance.
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Steven H Brown
Yreka, CA,
The provisions of the affordable Health Care Act mean, that my daughter age 21, is unlikely to ever have an unwanted pregnacy, and that her periods, should be much more manageable, on a monthly basis. It menas I will never have to council my daughter on a horrible decision, caused by an accident. Female contraception, will not prevent the spread of STD, so her male partner, should still use condoms, to protect them , until she is in a committed and exclusive relationship. Hopefully in the furture The Affordable Care Act will eventually be expanded, to include vasectomies, for men, that one time procedure, can save a lot of money spent on contraceptives in the USA.
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Martha Cuneo
Warren, MI, Retired Geographer
Birth Control and all other necessary and important medical services should be available to all who need them. This would protect my grand daughters and grandson, all three of whom are just entering adulthood. These fine young people are entitled to choose the course of their lives and of their relationships without the interference of self-appoined busy-bodies, governmental or otherwise. They are entitled to choose when to study, when to travel or just read and when to have the joy of having babies with someone they choose. Life is hard enough without having the government or worse, someone who just knows better than they do, how to run my grandchildren's lives. Planned Parenthood helped me as a young mother and I want them there for those, family or not, who follow me.
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Susan
, California,
My daughter began having heavy, frequent menstral periods in her late teens. She was becoming anemic and having great difficulty dealing with them. Her doctor put her on birth control medication which completely alleviated the problem. She is now in her early twenties and still taking the medication. She just graduated from college and is starting a new job and not having to pay a co-pay for these meds will be a huge help as she gets started.
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