US joins the large number of nations that have made oral contraceptives an OTC medication.
Research has shown that the need to hunt down a physician to write a prescription, and incur the cost of an office visit, is an unnecessary barrier to health care.
intercst
Hooray!
Considering that “the pill” became available around 1963, this obvious step only took 60 years to accomplish.
Wendy
Why rush a good thing?
Who’d have thunk it was equally for the males?
Sarcasm
Another thing comes to mind: making the pills a lot cheaper, might avoid the issue of health insurance, especially government mandated, or provided, insurance, paying for them, because that seems to get a lot of knuckle draggers upset.
I suspect the OC pill that’s been approved for OTC availability is a fair bit different from those early formulations. As someone who started on The Pill a full half century ago, I can’t see myself using them back then without some degree of GYN management.
From what I’ve read 90% of women taking the OTC formulation do so without complications. Make doctors available for those that need them, but don’t send everyone to a doctor for a prescription if it’s not necessary.
intercst