How Counter-Productive Is This?

I was waiting at the local café for my Mocha Millie Latté (it was either that or a 2 hour nap) when this article in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye:

College students returning to campus in a few weeks will be greeted by steep increases in one of the few items they have been able to buy cheap: birth control.

For years, drug companies sold birth-control pills and other contraceptives to university health services at a big discount. This has served as an entree to young consumers for the drug companies, and a profit center for the schools, which sell them to students at a moderate markup. Students pay perhaps $15 a month for contraceptives that otherwise can retail for $50 or more.

But colleges and universities say the drug companies have stopped offering the discounts, and are now charging the schools much more. The change has an unlikely origin [Unlikely? Yeah, right.]: the Deficit Reduction Act signed by President Bush last year. The legislation aimed to pare $39 billion in spending on federal programs, from subsidized student loans to Medicaid. And among the changes was one that, through an arcane set of circumstances, created a disincentive for drug makers to offer school discounts.

This infuriates me on so many levels I don't even know where to begin.

1) If you want to reduce the number of abortions, women must have access to affordable contraceptives. I know that in the wet-dreams of so-called Christian fundamentalists, young people are abstaining from premarital sex, but in the real world that is not happening (nor should it happen, in my opinion. Sex in a loving relationship between consenting adults is healthy and normal.)

2) It is one more way that Americans are being forced to pay for endless war and line the pockets of the war profiteers. Real budget deficit reduction would mean ending the war and cutting military spending. Period.

3) A loss in profits that the deep discounts on contraceptives supposedly cause the big pharmaceutical companies? Yeah, right! Their greed and arrogance is breathtaking. Check this out:

At drug maker Organon, Nick Hart, executive director for contraception, says, "On the one hand, it's a tremendous disservice to our customers, our young women." But he says that providing low-cost access to young consumers has to be balanced with "our fiduciary responsibility. It puts us in an untenable position."

(Blogger wipes tear from corner of eye.)

I have no doubt that this was no accident. It satisfies the Christian Right's desire to control all aspects of women's sexuality and delivers a nice monetary gift into the laps of Big Pharma. As Mr. Ether says, when it comes to any of Bush's policies, simply follow the money.

4) Finally, I HATE the way the corporate media continually reports on this president as if anything he does has any credibility. (I wanted to call him a "fuckwad", but I refrained. It isn't very Quakerly.)

Read the entire article here.