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Warning: this post will contain TMI, but somewhat necessary to fully explain my rant.
I'm annoyed and irritated these last few weeks. In the discussions about women's healthcare and the pathetic coverage of contraceptive in the U.S., somebody always goes on some rant about how it's unconscionable that so many insurers fail to cover basic contraceptives to women, but when it's men's ability to get a hard on, they have no problems covering it. As a 39 year old woman, I never thought to challenge that statement by actually researching whether or not those drugs are, in fact, coveted. Guess what? They're not.
My boyfriend is a 62 year old man (well, technically 61 for 6 more days). As is the case with many men of his age, he's been having some difficulty in getting and maintaining an erection. Being active swingers and also into the BDSM scene, we've worked around this issue to a great extent. I've had no real complaints, but he's been growing steadily more frustrated. Finally last week he had his "last straw" incident which pushed him to the point where he finally talked to his doctor about it. His doctor was more than happy to write a prescription for whatever would be the most financially feasible option for him. So we set out researching cost. This shit is expensive and not covered by his insurance. I talked to multiple pharmacists in out search for the least expensive way to get this prescription filled. In two cases I had a lengthy conversation with the pharmacist about insurance coverage. Both pharmacists stated that the overwhelming majority of insurance plans do not provide any sort of coverage for ED drugs, and the cheapest of those drugs is around $40 per pill. Viagra is the only one that comes in a generic, but that's a pill that's only 20mg, at about $7 per pill, and the most common doses for ED ate 75 and 100mg, so you would need 4-5 pills per dose, so still at least $30 per sexual activity sessions. This is not cheap, folks!* And contrary to certain talking points, most insurance companies aren't covering it!
If that's the case, why is this line still being used to slam the lack of women's contraceptive coverage? I'm frustrated because I feel that making false statements eventually harms women when it comes to the very real problems in women's healthcare. The powers that be hear those false statements and use that to claim women's advocates are being drama queens, and use that to justify their lack of action to solve the problems that most definitely exist.
*My boyfriend has an amazing doctor. Viagra is also used to treat pulmonary hypertension, so the doc wrote the script for the generic and coded it for that purpose. BF does have mild hypertension, so the insurance company coveted it for that purpose and we got 24 of the 20mg pills for $15. Turns out that a relatively low dose of 40mg does the job, so if we are careful and don't use it every time we want to have sexy times, we can make it last two weeks, which was the time frame the doctor specified on the original script. Also, this is doing far more than just letting him have a better boner. He'd been having depression issues and suddenly that's been much less of an issue since we started using it. Plus our relationship is under less strain now that he doesn't have performance anxiety. I think I could make an argument that medication to treat ED isn't just a recreational thing giving him a better sex life has had a far reaching affect to his overall health.
ETA: I'm on my tablet so there's a lot of autocorrect induced typos. I will come back and fix them when I get to a real computer.
I'm annoyed and irritated these last few weeks. In the discussions about women's healthcare and the pathetic coverage of contraceptive in the U.S., somebody always goes on some rant about how it's unconscionable that so many insurers fail to cover basic contraceptives to women, but when it's men's ability to get a hard on, they have no problems covering it. As a 39 year old woman, I never thought to challenge that statement by actually researching whether or not those drugs are, in fact, coveted. Guess what? They're not.
My boyfriend is a 62 year old man (well, technically 61 for 6 more days). As is the case with many men of his age, he's been having some difficulty in getting and maintaining an erection. Being active swingers and also into the BDSM scene, we've worked around this issue to a great extent. I've had no real complaints, but he's been growing steadily more frustrated. Finally last week he had his "last straw" incident which pushed him to the point where he finally talked to his doctor about it. His doctor was more than happy to write a prescription for whatever would be the most financially feasible option for him. So we set out researching cost. This shit is expensive and not covered by his insurance. I talked to multiple pharmacists in out search for the least expensive way to get this prescription filled. In two cases I had a lengthy conversation with the pharmacist about insurance coverage. Both pharmacists stated that the overwhelming majority of insurance plans do not provide any sort of coverage for ED drugs, and the cheapest of those drugs is around $40 per pill. Viagra is the only one that comes in a generic, but that's a pill that's only 20mg, at about $7 per pill, and the most common doses for ED ate 75 and 100mg, so you would need 4-5 pills per dose, so still at least $30 per sexual activity sessions. This is not cheap, folks!* And contrary to certain talking points, most insurance companies aren't covering it!
If that's the case, why is this line still being used to slam the lack of women's contraceptive coverage? I'm frustrated because I feel that making false statements eventually harms women when it comes to the very real problems in women's healthcare. The powers that be hear those false statements and use that to claim women's advocates are being drama queens, and use that to justify their lack of action to solve the problems that most definitely exist.
*My boyfriend has an amazing doctor. Viagra is also used to treat pulmonary hypertension, so the doc wrote the script for the generic and coded it for that purpose. BF does have mild hypertension, so the insurance company coveted it for that purpose and we got 24 of the 20mg pills for $15. Turns out that a relatively low dose of 40mg does the job, so if we are careful and don't use it every time we want to have sexy times, we can make it last two weeks, which was the time frame the doctor specified on the original script. Also, this is doing far more than just letting him have a better boner. He'd been having depression issues and suddenly that's been much less of an issue since we started using it. Plus our relationship is under less strain now that he doesn't have performance anxiety. I think I could make an argument that medication to treat ED isn't just a recreational thing giving him a better sex life has had a far reaching affect to his overall health.
ETA: I'm on my tablet so there's a lot of autocorrect induced typos. I will come back and fix them when I get to a real computer.
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