The Obama campaign is encouraging supporters to send the above "ecard," this one presumably designed for a daughter to send to her mother. They still haven't figured out that there are parents out there who don't want to know that their daughter is going at it so hard at college that she can't afford to buy birth control.
Of course, the letter might not come from a college students, but that's the first thought since we heard about all the Georgetown Law students who could afford $65,000 per year in tuition and expenses but couldn't spring for their own birth control pill for a night out with their fella.
There's lots of different types of drugs out there. For acid reflux I suppose I'd rather have Nexium than Prilosec. The two drugs are exactly the same, but Nexium is a "racemic" formulation, which means all the molecules point the same way. Nexium was introduced just as the patent for Prilosec was running out, and by some miracle they found in studies that Nexium actually promoted some esophageal healing. Prilosec probably would do the same thing, but of course nobody was going to run the tests for a drug going off-patent. In any event, if the drug is free or somebody else is paying, I'll take Nexium. If I'm buying, Prilosec is plenty good enough.
One of the problems with the Obama administration's free-birth-control-for-all policy is that there is now no incentive for people to use cheaper birth control. Wal-Mart and Target sell off-patent products for $9 per month. Obviously no one is touting these products with flashy television advertising, but just as Prilosec prevents acid reflex, these $9 pills prevent pregnancy.
If a woman stays on these pills for 30 years the cost will total $3,240, not $18,000. But do many women actually stay on birth control for 30 years without a break? I doubt it.
I don't doubt that one could find a heavily advertised birth control pill that would cost $18,000 over 30 years. Yaz, which just went generic does, although the price is likely to decline. But maybe people who are feeding at the public trough don't have a right to demand Nexium. They don't have a right to demand Yaz. It's not unreasonable to demand that being treated for free use inexpensive drugs.
In fact, if Mom is stupid enough to send her daughter $18,000, does anyone think the daughter will put the money away in a special account to purchase high-dollar, brand-name birth control for life? Not likely. The daughter might set aside $100 to buy a year's worth of birth control and then use the rest on high living. Once that money is hers, she's not likely to want to just throw it away.
Savvy folks, these liberals.
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