Keeping the Faith Extends to Prescription Drugs: Drugs, Sex But No Rock 'n Roll

In case no one’s noticed, there’s a new influx of faith-based pharmacies.

Turns out that the "pro-life" groups have a broad agenda. It's not just that they are against abortion on moral grounds, they want to take us back to the dark days when contraception was prohibited.

Recent news tells us that now there are quite a multitude of pharmacies that can refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control:

Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy is among at least seven pharmacies across the nation that are refusing as a matter of faith to sell contraceptives of any kind, even if a person has a prescription.

Pharmacists in Virginia are allowed to refuse to fill prescriptions for any reason whatsoever. So a small pharmacy in a Virginia suburb won’t carry contraceptives of any type, on moral grounds. This is their policy, in keeping with their faith. However, a call to the pharmacy determined that they do fill prescriptions for Viagra because it’s for “a medical condition.”

So for the faith-based, erectile dysfunction is a “medical condition” but pregnancy is not. This interpretation of “medical” is also in line with health insurance companies. Some insurance companies cover Viagra but do not cover oral contraception, using the same reasoning even though Viagra is a much more expensive drug and thus costs them more.

Impotence is no more a disease than pregnancy. The drug industry promotes Viagra and other similar drugs as a lifestyle “choice.” Recall some of those ads that tout the “choice” of timing for sexual activity and compare it to the anti-choice lobby that denies women a choice should that first “choice” result in pregnancy. At the same time, the insurance companies and the heath insurance industry claim ED drugs as the answer to correct a “medical condition.” Technically, contraception prevents a medical condition, whether that condition is pregnancy or some other medical problem. If a woman is willing to fight her insurance company and prove that she needs oral contraception to prevent something other than pregnancy, she has a good chance of winning.

But Viagra doesn’t prevent anything except deflation of the male ego and genitalia. If medications that prevent medical conditions are not to be covered by health insurance, then logically they can’t also cover any kind of preventive care, from flu shots to vaccines to check-ups to mammograms. But most health insurance plans cover preventive care because they know it’s sound policy and cheaper in the long run. Since when does health insurance cover cosmetic surgery, which might also boost the ego?

Slowly, the creeping faith-based initiatives have worked their way into both public policies and private practice. From foreign aid to medical dispensaries, the right-wing has forged a back-door for enforcing a ban on both abortion and contraception. The foreign aid policies may be changed with a new administration. What a private pharmacy does or doesn’t do is (and should be) outside of legislative reach.

That said, however, it seems like fair game to push for a legislative initiative  mandating that any pharmacy that accepts Medicaid or Medicare prescription plans for reimbursement must accept all bona fide prescriptions without discrimination as to the purpose of the drug. If the Bush Administration can cut off funding because an organization discusses abortion even if it doesn’t offer abortion services, why shouldn’t pharmacies be held to the same standards?