The rollout is underway for Opill, the first over-the-counter birth control pill approved in the United States, and online sales began Monday morning.
Consumers can start ordering Opill online Monday, and orders will be fulfilled within a day or two, Sara Young, senior vice president and chief consumer officer at Perrigo, said in an email. So far, the product will be available at Opill.com and Amazon.
“Because privacy is important to Perrigo, Opill orders will be sent in plain, unbranded boxes,” Young wrote.
Opill has a suggested retail price of $19.99 for a one-month supply, $49.99 for a three-month supply, and at Opill.com, a six-month supply will be available for $89.99.
Earlier this month, the first shipments of Opill were sent to distributors, major drug stores and pharmacies — but as those shipments make their way through the distribution pipeline, it can take days to weeks before customers are able to get their hands on the product.
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But will they ship to states where it is banned?
I heard some states have proposed laws pre emptively banning over the counter birth control, but I don’t think any of them actually passed yet.
But to answer your question it likely depend on two things if a state were to ban it, supreme court rulings in these two cases currently being heard: Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and Danco Laboratories v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, and who is elected president next year.
Currently FDA officials are using interstate commerce powers to protect the shipping of abortion drugs across state lines, and theoretically they could continue to do that for birth control drugs (if the Supreme Court doesn’t rule against them and Trump doesn’t get elected and appoint new fda leadership hostile to women’s health).
From the article:
No states have made such proposals or actions on restricting access to Opill, but the concern stems from the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022, which reversed Roe v. Wade and overturned the constitutional right to an abortion.
and:
But these examples have not set a precedent for what type of authority states may have to restrict access to an FDA-approved medication, Gupta said.
When it comes to Opill, “many states also allow pharmacists to refuse to participate in ‘health care’ that they find morally objectionable. This could include providing individuals with Opill even though it is OTC,” she said. “Legal approval and actual access are two distinct issues, with the latter influenced by a broader set of factors including state policies, healthcare practices, and socio-economic determinants of health.”
That’s quite expensive compared to insurance. I wonder if insurances in the US will cover it with flex or HSA plans.
I don’t know how others are, but my HSA covers catch-all ‘birth control’. If you can reasonably justify it as birth control, they just accept it. Yes, that includes condoms too.
So is this stuff basically the same as typical oral contraceptives? What difference was made that it was approved OTC?
