USA – Contraception Is Free To Women, Except When It’s Not

July 21, 2021
MICHELLE ANDREWS

For Stephanie Force, finding a birth control method that she likes and can get without paying out of pocket has been a struggle, despite the Affordable Care Act's promise of free contraceptives for women and adolescent girls in most health plans.

The 27-year-old physician recruiter in Roanoke, Va., was perfectly happy with the NuvaRing, a flexible vaginal ring that women insert monthly to release hormones to prevent pregnancy. But her insurer, Anthem, stopped covering the branded product and switched her to a generic version in early 2020. Force says the new product left her with headaches and feeling irritable and short-tempered.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/07/21/1018483557/contraception-is-free-to-women-except-when-its-not

USA – How billionaire philanthropy provides reproductive health care when politicians won’t

How billionaire philanthropy provides reproductive health care when politicians won’t
How philanthropists brought us modern contraception — and where we’d be without them.

By Kelsey Piper
Sep 17, 2019

There’s a new backlash against billionaire philanthropy. Some of its leading voices have argued that “every billionaire is a policy failure” and that it’d be better if billionaires didn’t exist at all — even if that meant the disappearance of philanthropy by billionaires.

The conversation has done a lot of valuable work, encouraging more scrutiny of charitable activity, pointing out where philanthropy is a fig leaf for misconduct, and forcing institutions to grapple with when it’s wrong to accept money that was unethically acquired.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/9/17/20754970/billionaire-philanthropy-reproductive-health-care-politics

USA – Patients face higher fees and longer waits after Planned Parenthood quits federal program

Patients face higher fees and longer waits after Planned Parenthood quits federal program
The agency forfeited millions after refusing to comply with what it calls a Trump administration ‘gag rule’ regarding abortion referrals.

By Ariana Eunjung Cha and Sheila Regan
August 24, 2019

In Cleveland, a Planned Parenthood mobile clinic that tests for sexually transmitted diseases has reduced its hours and may shut down. In Minneapolis, women and girls used to free check-ups are now billed as much as $200 per visit on a sliding fee scale. And in Vienna, West Va., Planned Parenthood employees are marking boxes of birth control pills with “Do not use” signs because they were paid for with federal grants the organization can no longer accept.

Planned Parenthood’s decision this week to quit a $260 million federal family planning program rather than comply with what it calls a “gag rule” imposed by the Trump administration on abortion referrals is creating turmoil in many low-income communities across the United States.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/24/patients-face-higher-fees-longer-waits-after-planned-parenthood-quits-federal-program/

24.08.2019