THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, APRIL 20. 2009
MONDAY, APRIL 20. 2009
NEWS
5A
HEALTH
Birth control prices could go down for students
BY LAUREN HENDRICK
lhendrick@kansan.com
Right now, NuvaRing costs $54, a price uninsured students are often unable to pay, Cathy Thrasher, Watkins Memorial Health Center pharmacist, remembers when students could buy the alternative form of contraception for less than $20 without insurance. With President Barack Obama's approval of the Omnibus Appropriations Bill on March 11, drug manufacturers can restore discounted contraception prices.
The Federal Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 cut clinic packaging
of contraception beginning in 2006. But with the assistance of the new law signed by Obama last month, health clinics that cater to universities may see the return of discounted contraceptives.
The new law has health providers like Thrasher scrambling to restore affordable contraceptive options. Thrasher said manufacturers offered clinic packages, different from retail packages, so women could sample different birth control options for a reduced price.
Brands like NuvaRing and Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo were no longer offered at discounted prices to uninsured students after the Federal Deficit Reduction Act.
Thrasher said Watkins
administrators were drafting a letter to send to manufacturers and hoped that students would help create
awareness about the importance of restoring affordable contraception. She said a student petition might help push the cause.
Elise Higgins, who is the president of the Commission
have affordable contraception," said Higgins, Topeka junior.
Higgins bought her birth control
on the Status of Women, said the price of her birth control changed after the Federal Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.
"The crux of it is that it doesn't obligate the manufacturer to offer the discount."
PATRICIA DENNING Watkins physician
"It's so important that women who can't afford health insurance
night her birth control from Planned Parenthood and went from paying $10 a month to $18 a month after the Federal Deficit Reduction Act was passed.
Higgins was prescribed four different kinds
of birth control after the act was passed because Planned Parenthood couldn't maintain its discounted supplies. After the price of her birth control increased by $8, she realized she could use her
parents' insurance at Watkins to purchase it for less.
Watkins pharmacy didn't see the effects of the Federal Deficit Reduction Act until 2007 when the pharmacy started to run low on its birth control stock. Thrasher said that brand-name birth control used to cost students $8 to $11 a month, but that prices had significantly increased.
Higgins said that Watkins provided affordable birth control options for students by offering generic brands, but that urging manufacturers to offer discounted prices would help a lot of uninsured women.
Patricia Denning, senior staff physician at Watkins, said birth
control manufacturers would have to feel pressure from consumers before they took the necessary steps to reinstate more affordable birth control.
"The crux of it is that it doesn't obligate the manufacturer to offer the discount," Denning said. The Omnibus Appropriations bill only removed the barrier to reinstate contracts with university health clinics.
Students interested in building a campaign to restore affordable contraception should contact Mai Do at Watkins Memorial Health Center at (785) 864-0388.
- Edited by Liz Schubauer
NATIONAL
Oklahoma City bombing's 14th anniversary observed
BY TIM TALLEY Associated Press
OKLAHOMA CITY — It was 14 years ago when Doris Battles' parents were killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, just two of the 168 people who died during the nation's worst domestic terrorist attack.
"I can't go home and see him anymore." Battle said of her father, Calvin Battle, who died with her mother Peola when the Oklahoma City federal building was bombed on April 19, 1995. And Battle said the passage of time had not diminished the loss she still feels.
Battle was among 400 people who gathered Sunday to observe the 14th anniversary of the bombing of the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, an attack that also injured hundreds of people. The explosion of a truck loaded with 4,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil tore the face off the building and caused millions of dollars in damage
to other downtown structures.
Timothy McVeigh was executed in 2001 and Terry Nichols is serving multiple life sentences on federal and state convictions for their convictions in the bombing. Prosecutors had said the plot was an attempt to avenge the deaths of about 80 people in the government siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, exactly two years earlier.
Dr. Paul Heath, a retired psychologist with the Veterans Administration and a bombing survivor, attended the ceremony at the bombing memorial, where 168 empty chairs symbolizing the victims sit on a grassy field where the building stood.
"The memory of the bombing is just as clear today as it was the day after the bombing. The memories run just like a video in my head," Heath said, who placed flowers at a granite memorial for survivors.
Retired Marine Staff Sgt. Ted
Krey tied American flags to chairs bearing the names of Sgt. Benjamin LaRanzo Davis and Capt. Randolph A. Guzman, killed in the building's Marine Corps recruiting office.
Richard Williams, the building's former assistant manager, said it was important that survivors and victims' family members remember both victims and rescuers.
"They're fellow brothers. Marines are like that," said Krey, who was part of a rescue team after the bombing and was a few feet away when rescuers pulled Guzman's body out of the rubble.
"We will always do this," said Williams, who was seriously injured in the bombing. "We're going to do something every year."
During the ceremony, the crowd observed 168 seconds of silence and survivors and victims' family members read victims' names at the spot that the Rev. Tom Ogburn of First Baptist Church of Oklahoma City called "holy ground."
Dawn DeArmon adjusts the photo of her mother, Kathy Leinen, at her chair in the field of chairs at the Oklahoma City Memorial & Museum on the 14th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing on Sunday.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
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