Writing in Mother Jones, Stephanie Mencimer explains why birth control pills should be sold over the counter:
[T]he US Preventative Services Task Force, an independent group of national experts that makes evidence-based health care recommendations, released new guidelines declaring definitively that women over 30 don't need a Pap smear more than once every three years unless they have a couple of risk factors, which I don't have. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has said that birth control pills can safely be prescribed without a full-on exam.
Doctors, though, don't seem to be in any hurry to give up old habits. After I got back from vacation, I emailed my doctor, citing the new guidelines, and asked if he could give me a new one-year prescription for birth control pills without a pelvic exam. He wrote back, "Yes, one can argue about whether or not you need a pap, but current recommendations are still for an annual exam, blood pressure readings, updating family history, ('torturous pelvic exam,' I'm afraid), etc. So I would still like you to come in. See you soon?"
The doctor had me over a barrel. As it turns out, my experience isn't unique. Doctors regularly hold women's birth control prescriptions hostage like this, forcing them to come in for exams that research is increasingly showing are too frequent and often unnecessary and ineffective. A 2010 study published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology found that 33 percent of doctors always require a pelvic exam and Pap smear for a hormonal contraception prescription, and 44 percent regularly do so, even though there's no medical reason for linking the two….
"'Don't do it' is not a message that the drug industry and the medical device industry is all that excited about," [health policy expert Shannon] Brownlee says. Guidelines from the government trickle down very slowly to doctor's practices. And patients raise these issues at their peril, Brownlee notes. "When you have that conversation with your doctor, you often get labeled as a noncompliant patient." The health care system is also plagued with irrational incentives that reward doctors for doing more rather than less, even when it's in the patient's best interest to be judicious. Doctors need to keep their waiting rooms full to keep their practices open.
There is one way to change the system: Make the Pill an over-the-counter (OTC) drug. If women could get birth control pills from a pharmacy, like they do in other countries, and could decide for themselves whether they should have a pelvic exam every year, the country could experience serious health care savings. Unnecessary health care treatment overall is estimated to cost at least $158 billion a year.
Read the whole thing here. And if you'd like to see some more on the subject, you should plow through the Reason archives: We've been on this beat for years.
