Both Target and Walmart have a limited list of prescription meds (mostly old generics) that they will only charge $4 for.
Even with that rate of taking the pill correctly (even delaying by a couple hours on one single day of the year might drop you down on that rating), the pill is still highly effective for contraception (2-9 pregnancies in a year per 100 women) and may have other beneficial effects.
At Wal-Mart the sole oral contraceptive offered is $9. You can check the website.
I tried the pill. It turned me into an evil woman. Depo, the same. I am very sensitive to chemicals. So I went with the diaphragm. That worked just fine until I developed an allergy to latex. I am now surgically beyond the need for birth control.
But there’s still diseases to worry about.
Yeah, I was just saying where the idea of $4 prescriptions came from.
People are afraid of the weight gain from Depo and Implanon, because anybody who gains 10 pounds in this climate is a fatty, right? In seriousness, it can be pretty bad. Essure is too permanent, IUD’s can be painful to insert and some people have vague moral objections to them–as in, they don’t prevent the implantation but do allow it to just sort of… run out… ew. I’m not against them, but… ew. Doctors don’t want to give tubals because they hate women. Pills are generally pretty cheap, easy to obtain, and portable. They don’t have to be refrigerated like, what is it, the patch and Nuva Ring?
The only one I’m intimately familiar with is Depo Provera. I’ve been on it since late 2004/early 2005 (don’t remember which) and it is a miracle for me. It prevents me from getting pregnant, it takes away my periods and all the bullshit that comes with endometriosis. I have gained weight, but I’m also hypothyroid, so it’s up in the air which is the real culprit there. Maybe both. I couldn’t be happier with it, really. It’s helped my skin (I think, anyway) and it reduces your risk of some types of cancer. It’s terribly convenient if you’re not afraid of needles. I’m a walking advertisement for the stuff.
Unfortunately it comes with awful side effects for lots of people, including serious weight gain, mood swings, extended bleeding, migraine headaches, etc. And of course, once you’ve taken it, you’re stuck for 12 to 15 weeks before it wears off. Going off it is a nightmare of mood swings and random, unpredictable bleeding and cramps. Also it will melt your bones if you stay on it long enough. It also doesn’t contain estrogen, so if you’re on it for long term you may wind up on estrogen supplements* because your hormones gradually get more and more fucked up. And that’s why nobody likes Depo.
Just want to make two points:
I was just trying to figure out how much safe and effective birth control actually costs. I can say that I actually know less than when I started the thread. There doesn’t seem to be a cheap and widely acceptable birth control on the market. Actually there doesn’t seem to be a expensive and widely acceptable birth control on the market. Even among woman that use the pill there seem to be strong differences in opinion about which brands and generics have acceptable side effects. I also find it hard to find cost information about the various brands.
[QUOTE=spankthecrumpet;14788347 I feel really sorry for you American ladies not being allowed IUD. Actually, it’s disgusting that you’re not.
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We’re not, actually, universally. I personally know two very young unmarried women with no children that got that Mirena IUD with no problems whatsoever. (Including insertion pain, btw…they both walked out of the doctors office and went to work that same day). I really feel like getting an IUD depends a lot on the doctor’s comfort level…and it seems like young, female GYNs are much more likely to be comfortable with inserting IUDs in young childless women.
You aren’t going to get a definitive answer because there isn’t one. How much a particular birth control method costs is going to depend on whether you are insured or not (at least in the U.S.), and where you buy it. Different doctor’s offices/pharmacies have different prices, insurance plans have different rules/copays/coinsurance for different methods, and many Planned Parenthood outlets charge for products and services on a sliding scale according to your income.
There are a bunch of formulations of BC pills out there because everyone’s different and one type that will work well for one person will have unacceptable side effects for another. Similar is true for any type of BC that uses hormones. Part of what goes into the decision-making for any method has to be if you can live with that method or not - a lot of times price is secondary to that, and it does take some searching to figure out how to keep the costs down after you’ve made the decision on what you are going to do.
And yes, our healthcare system in this country only serves to make everything that much more complicated.
Who else learned a new word today?
Seriously, I’ve never heard this word before. Amazing really.
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You know how when you learn a word in print and read it lots and then say it out loud, only your pronunciation is all stupid and wrong because you’ve never heard anyone actually say it? Yeah. It’s not, shockingly enough, “nully-PARE-us”. It’s “nul-IP-uh-rus.” As I found out to my chagrin the first day of OB class. :smack:
Related fun terms:
primip/primiparous (“pruh-MIP-uh-rus”): a woman who is pregnant and has not carried a fetus past 20 weeks before/a first viable pregnancy
Bipara/biparous (“BIHP-uh-rus”): a woman who is pregnant and carried one other fetus at past 20 weeks in the past/a second viable pregnancy
Multip/multiparous (“mul-TIP-uh-rus”): a woman who is pregnant and has carried more than one other fetus past 20 weeks in the past/a third viable pregnancy
Grand multipara: a woman who has carried 5 or more fetuses past 20 weeks
(There is room here for a variety of hair splittings. If you want to get a group of midwives fighting for your own shallow amusement, ask them whether a woman who miscarried twins at 20 weeks and 0 days and is now pregnant is a primip, bipara or a multip.)
[quote=“aruvqan, post:60, topic:613006”]
I would love for all the damned male doctors to have to go through PCOS that was that debillitating and tell women then to just deal with it.
I remember reading about your experiences and they sound awful 
but I can honestly say that after having a variety of gynos the most gentle have been men. I actually started tearing up during a routine exam and the stupid bitch said “Chill out – you haven’t even given birth yet”.
I’m hoping you were actually serious because 10 pounds on a 5 foot tall woman is nothing to scoff at. Also, half of the US is now overweight, so yes, we are a fat country and growing.
One more thing – not every state ALLOWS those $10 for 3 month or $4/month birth control generics to be carried.
Pennsylvania is one of those special, paternalistic nanny-states I’m referring to. I’ve known people who use other country mail orders or who take a $30 in gas round trip to get 6 months of their generics across the state line.
FWIW, I am childless and had one inserted at the age of 26. It was a horrible, horrible idea.
I very much care about the 10 pounds I gained with Depo, and things that used to work for losing weight don’t anymore. But Depo is my best option until they let me have a hysterectomy.
Well, yeah. The side effects of any given formulation are going to be different for different people. Just like Benadryl doesn’t affect some people at all,and others it makes a little drowsy, and some people it knocks flat on their ass, and other people it actually hypes up, any given bcp can be beneficial, neutral, mildly negative but not enough to switch brands, or really fucking awful, depending on the exact individual body chemistry of the woman taking it. And, of course, different people have different tolerances for the exact same side effects.
As for how much it costs, as others have said, it varies by not only what you’re getting and whether it’s generic and what market you’re in, but whether you have insurance, what kind of insurance you have, and what formulary tier your insurance puts your pill on–some insurance plans have much higher copays for certain pills, sometimes nearly twice as much as for other name brand prescriptions. If you want a general idea, you can make a list of common brand names and call a local pharmacy to check self-pay retail prices for those and their generics. By and large, though, for someone with prescription drug coverage, out of pocket is going to be somewhere between $10 for a generic to about $40 for a non-formulary brand name.
I don’t mean to trivialize the weight gain, I suppose I’ve simply come to accept that there is no better option for me because Depo is the only thing that takes away my period 100% reliably. After my hysterectomy I will join a gym and be serious about getting back to my pre-Depo weight, even though I’m just barely in the “overweight” category now for my height right now. It just irritates me how many women see weight as a reflection of their self-worth, but that’s a whole 'nother thread.
My problem isn’t the cost of the pills themselves ($10 a month at Target), but getting a prescription written. Since I don’t have insurance, my options are very expensive (relatively) and not even guaranteed to garner the script I need. I suppose that’s a different definition of cost, though.
Can you tell me what that is, please? I’ve never heard of it. And it seems contraintuitive to me. You - well, not* you*, seeing as you’re a man 
- take a pill orally, while an implant is inserted into you.
I think it is just a terminology problem. I think he is talking about Implanon.
http://www.channel4.com/news/implanon-contraception-failures-cost-nhs-200-000
It seems to be very reliable, but there have been some issues because of improper insertion, so it is being phased out in favor of Nexplanon.
They mention the cost as £90, but the actual insertion costs may be covered by NHS.
It took me a few doctors to find someone who’d give me an IUD, and the Planned Parenthood only gave me one 'cause I had the “I’ll be married in under a year” card to pull with them.
The worst “no, we won’t give you an IUD” doctor I had was a woman who told me that, if I wanted, she’d give me a referral to another doctor who did Implanon. I got rushed out, sans prescription, sans referral, and the folks who answered the phones wouldn’t fax, mail, or let me pick up that referral or even the doctor’s name that she was going to refer me to. At least I got the BC pill prescription after the fact.
A lot of it is cultural. Many women are discouraged from touching their genitals and sometimes even any sort of contact; there’s this unspoken idea that vaginas are unclean and inappropriate to come into contact with among enough females that it’s still a lingering issue. Yeah, it’s a little invasive to stick things in your vagina, but it’s not nearly as invasive as other invasive procedures.
Unluckily for me, Costco doesn’t stock the particular size I would need in condoms. My husband has only had luck with this particular style, and even then it’s a little snug.
Due to a rather long series of events*, I am verboten by my OBGYN to use hormonal birth control, am at least temporarily not allowed to get another IUD inserted, and I am a little under a year away from the point where my husband and I agreed we’d visit the “permanent sterilization” discussion to make a final decision. We currently switch between condoms, contraceptive film, and carefully tracking when it’s a very bad idea to have sex without protection. I’ve been tracking all of this with an app on my phone, as I’ve got mildly irregular periods and always have.
*Got an IUD in 2008, and due to a lot of stuff going on in my life (mom died of cancer while I was in grad school and wedding planning), I didn’t end up checking to see whether the thing was inserted properly. Cut to three years later and I’m bleeding heavily for over a month. I go to the OBGYN, end up having it removed, and they do tests to see if they can figure out why the bleeding occurred, as it wasn’t entirely the IUD’s fault. Ends up I’ve got severe cervical dysplasia, which is a pre-cancerous stage in my case. I get surgical removal and the samples get tested; I had squamous carcinomas growing on my cervix. I just got through the first three months post-op and I’m scheduled for tests every three months until I get two results in a row that show normal conditions; at that point, I get to switch up to every six months. I’ll talk to him about changing our contraceptive options once I’m far enough into the recovery period for it to not be a big deal.
Add me to the “yay, Depo!” list. I was on it for 2 years, while I was with my ex, and it was awesome: my periods stopped completely (I’m still a little grumpy that I have to deal with them again), I had no weight gain or other side effects, and it helped my hormone-related acne. The only downsides were having to make a doctor’s appointment every three months for the injection (though I didn’t mind the injection itself), and the cost – IIRC, it was something like $140 for each shot. My ex and I alternated paying for them.
That wasn’t the case for me: I had no mood swings, and no bleeding or cramps until my regular periods came back. But, I also used the lower-dose version of Depo – depo-subQ.
This was why I stopped taking it after my relationship ended: my doctor didn’t like the idea of me being on it for more than two consecutive years. My ex and I were actually starting to talk about him getting a vasectomy, but then we broke up. Between my doctor’s concerns and the cost of the shots, I couldn’t justify staying on Depo when I knew I wasn’t likely to be sexually active again any time soon – not with anyone who I wouldn’t use a condom with, anyway.
I miss it, though. The minute I’m in another monogamous relationship I’m going right back on the shot, and I don’t care if my bones melt.
I don’t understand why some birth control pills aren’t available as $4 generics. Some birth control hormones patents expired decades ago and some of the $4 generics actually use the same hormones.