Insurance Companies: How DO You Sleep At Night?

Let's be real: just about every woman I know around my age takes birth control pills. This is clearly a necessary part of many people's lives. I've been taking the exact same birth control pill for years now myself, and it does exactly what I ask it to do. No Bristol Palin action for this lady.

But now, I have a new job, which comes with a new health insurance plan. And while I fully recognize that I am lucky to have health insurance at all, I was highly dismayed to learn today that the birth control I've been on for ages now, the one that my doctor prescribes because she thinks it's best for me, and which I feel comfortable ingesting on a daily basis, is not on my health insurance company's "preferred" list, and thus I am expected to cough up $50+ a month if I would like to keep taking it -- despite my employer's payment of what I assume are fairly high premiums, which are supposed to cover my medical needs. Finding this ridiculous, I inquired how I might contact the decision-makers who concoct this "preferred" list, and was told that would be impossible. Are they Santa Claus? Because otherwise I am not sure how it could be impossible to get in touch with a body of decision-makers at a fairly sizeable health insurance company. Certainly these decision-makers may not wish to be contacted by a disgruntled woman who was just forced off her perferred form of contraception, but that is a different question.

Meanwhile, on the preferred list, of course, are all generics, a distinction which I am a little fuzzy on, especially given that I am the sort of person who has always stuck with Advil over "Rite Aid Ibuprofen," which I am informed is the same product. When it comes to drugs, though, I trust my doctor far more than I trust some group of unreachable mystery pharmacists, who've clearly sold out to the man and presumably "prefer" generics because they are "cheaper."

I, however, prefer the real thing, because a daily dose of hormones is no joke, and I don't appreciate being asked to compromise when it comes to my health.