Be Prepared

Ever since the Affordable Care Act was passed, I've been waiting for the day when I can get birth control for free. Sadly, I will remain waiting, well, basically ad infinitum at this point.

My company's insurance plan renewed in September, shortly after ACA was passed, so I got all excited about my pills, because, just to refresh your memory, they are currently $1.25 per pill. Per pill! And considering four are iron pills, we're really talking $1.45 per pill here. And these aren't some medical miracle pills either. I mean, sure, they're doing their job, but we're not talking a retroviral cocktail that took billions of dollars in research. Anyway, I got all excited because plan renewal meant free pills. Huzzah!

Except.

Our insurance gave me the run around and some mumbo jumbo about how they are a trust (?) and not...I don't know, something about how the rules wouldn't apply until September 2013. What? I don't know. Anyway, come December our company sent around an email saying that it turns out pills will be covered starting in January. Huzzah!

Except.

My latest pack of pills sure did cost $35. Of course it did. Apparently, the reasoning is that they only cover generics, regardless of whether your prescription has a generic or not. And here's the thing. I know that, logically, I could just switch to a generic. But #1) I've found a pill that works that I really like, for a number of reasons. I used to take another pill but switched, and am much happier on this one. #2) You can say generics are the same, but they're not, not when it comes to stuff like this.

If I have a cold or something like that where I'll only be taking pills for a few days, give me the cheaper generic Walgreens version any day of the week. But a pill, filled with hormones that you ingest into your body every single day, is different. And before you say I sound all hippie-dippie-get-the-fluoride-out-of-my-water, I tried taking a generic of my previous pill, and the results were extremely different. Namely, it made me incredibly, incredibly depressed. Technically, a generic is supposed to be the same pill, so I'm not sure if it was the "inactive" ingredients that somehow made a difference, or, you know, since it turned out the patent hadn't expired on the name brand and they weren't really allowed to make a generic and it was pulled off the market just a couple months after I started taking it, which was really a blessing because hello, aforementioned depression, but come on! You're putting people on a pill that isn't approved or technically legal to sell. That seems really, really safe.

So. Generics. Not a fan. (When it comes to this.) So, it looks like I will be stuck paying the $35 for the foreseeable future. I griped about insurance and its ridiculousness on Facebook, and my coworker came back with the best comment: "Luckily, when you mistakenly become pregnant, your breast pump will now be free!"

Speaking of which, a friend happened to post on Facebook recently on that very thing, how to score a free breast pump due to the Affordable Care Act, which I think is pretty great. And although I have no immediate plans to need such a thing (see: the entire rest of this post dedicated to a product that prevents babies), somewhere in the future I will, so I tend to read a fair amount of pregnant- and birth- and parenting-related stuff. So, I read through the breast pump article, which was housed on a mommy parenting site. Sucked into the rabbit hole, I started reading a few other articles on the site. Ah-ha: Seven Things to do Before You Get Pregnant. Perfect, I thought.

But it was horrible! There was not a single spec of useful advice. Rather than something logical like, "Save money for the super expensive kid you're about to have," it gave me such gems as "Get out of an abusive relationship."

Um, ok. I mean, technically, yes. Having a baby with an abusive partner is a bad idea. But somehow, I don't know, I was looking more along the lines of, "Sign up for short term disability insurance so you'll have a way to pay for maternity leave."

I don't know...something...useful.