Getting a prescription for birth control pills is an incredible pain in the neck. Normally, you are required to see a gynecologist once a year to get a year-long prescription. Even that is stupid because there is absolutely no reason to make birth control into prescription medication. But the doctors need to make money and this is one way of making sure women are forced to see them and pay exorbitant sums for these unnecessary visits. Now, even that silly system doesn't often work the way it is supposed to.
Since I moved, I went to a new doctor for my prescription. I was only given one for 3 months and asked to come again for a new one because I am a new patient. My health insurance paid the doctor $132 for this 10 minute long visit. The entire visit consisted of me engaging in the following idiotic conversations with the nurse (I didn't even get to see the doctor):
Nurse: Have you had any pregnancies?
Me: No.
Nurse: Any abortions?
I don't know what she thought I could have aborted since I had already said I'd had no pregnancies. This mystery remains unsolved. Then we had the following exchange:
Nurse: Have you been married for a long time?
Me: A month.
Nurse: Huh! That's strange.
Me: Why?
Nurse: You look like you have been married a long time.
I still don't know whether to take this as a compliment or an insult.
Now I have to go back for more inane conversations in the same style. I swear to God, it's easier to get access to heroin than to simple harmless birth control. Of course, nobody is interested in making these unnecessary visits to a doctor disappear as part of this so-called healthcare reform.
Even with prescription insurance, a packet of pills (that lasts a month) costs $28. It is so frustrating to hear all the anti-abortion propaganda in a society where access to legal birth control is so painful and expensive. How can anybody expect a teenager from an underprivileged background, for example, to have money for this prescription and the endless visits to the doctor to get it in the first place?
12 comments:
Your post is a great argument for every person who has the means to support Planned Parenthood. I started going at 13 to get on the pill. Stopped when I was 20 and got my first job that had benefits. But I still send $$ to them in the hopes that another 13 year old won't end up facing an unwanted pregnancy. They literally saved my life as my mother's f-ed up "sex talk" consisted of, "If you get pregnant I'll kick your ass so far and so hard you'll miscarry." No worries, mom, I'm already on the pill- no thanks to you.
One more question :)
Ever tried IUD?
What happiness that in Russia it is possible to buy the majority of tablets without the recipe, and contraceptive especially. But at us other problem: many false medicines, you think that drink contraceptive tablets, and actually it can appear a simple chalk. And it unfortunately too raises statistics of abortions.
NataliaV
NataliaV,
Sorry for my ignorance - but how people are able not to notice the difference between real and fake thing in case of the birth control pills? They are supposed to affect one's feeling during the period... In fact they are prescribed to make periods less painful...
I understand everybody is different, but shouldn't not feeling any difference whatsoever be a hint if one knows that some pills on the market are fake?
On a miscellaneous happens. I, for example, that with tablets that without them do not test any especial feelings, and change in a cycle at reception of such pills is observed not earlier, than in a month of reception. The first month precisely anything cannot be noticed. Yes we know that in the market of medicines it is a lot of fakes, but with each pill will not run for examination.
NataliaV
As far as I know, it is not recommended to have otherwise unprotected sex during the first month on the pill even if one is sure the pill is real.
Also, during the very first month of a new relationship it is very good idea to use condoms as STD protection anyway, even if one was on the pill for a long time before that.
To tell the truth, I not the special professional in this area, am possible you and are right. But where the guarantee that false will appear the first box of tablets, instead of the second or the third. We not in lots buy.
NataliaV
This is not an issue that exists in the US, and still we are persecuted by these restrictions.
Anonymous: hard to believe, but your mother's sex talk was more than I ever got from my parents. :-)
I came across a great essay in a book I recently picked up:
http://www.gladwell.com/2000/2000_03_10_a_rock.htm
This quotes stuck w/me: "...during the placebo week, the number of users experiencing pelvic pain, bloating, and swelling more than triples, breast tenderness more than doubles, and headaches increase by almost fifty per cent. In other words, some women on the Pill continue to experience the kinds of side effects associated with normal menstruation...In the past forty years, millions of women around the world have been given the Pill in such a way as to maximize their pain and suffering."
Of course I should have revised that to "THESE quotes"...
I've been very lucky with my pill. It has no side effects at all. But I know that for many women it takes a lot of effort to find the right pill.
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