how's your blood pressure?

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Sep 10, 2007

The doctor says you need medicine to keep down your blood pressure. The prescription isn't cheap, but the alternatives, which might include a heart attack or a stroke, leave you with little choice. You fork out the dollars, your blood pressure goes down, and then you see this story.

College students are complaining about the higher price of contraceptives on campus this year.

The increase was the result of a change in the 2005 Medicaid rebate law that eliminated the large discounts drug companies had offered to college health clinics.

Or to put it another way, for years your tax dollars were going to subsidize prescription contraceptives for college kids, so that they could party while you took a few hours of overtime each month to pay for your new meds.

"Most people in college are not working and they don't have extra money to spend on birth control," said Alexandra Hatzopoulos, 18, a freshman at UMass-Boston.

With tuition and fees approaching $50,000 a year at some schools, we know that money is tight. Why, after the CDs and clothes and movies and Ipods and pizza and margaritas at the frat house and cell phones and spring breaks in Cancun, students have barely a penny left. And we wouldn't want the poor dears forced to work, now would we? But thank goodness they do have a bit of extra time for recreational activities, of the sort that might require pharmaceutical intervention. A spokesman for Planned Parenthood tells us: "Contraception is basic health care."

So how's your blood pressure now?