In a tragic turn of events for college students nationwide, birth control costs on campuses are going through the roof. Last year's Deficit Reduction Act has recently been fingered as the culprit in the rising costs.

The $39 billion in cuts were leveled at things like subsidized student loans, Medicaid, candy, children's toys, etc; Gawker alerted us this morning to a Wall Street Journal article which dished the full details of its implications for subsidized contraceptives.

Anne Marie Chaker writes that "through an arcane set of circumstances" the act has disincentivized drug companies from subsidizing their product for school markets.

The contraceptive prices offered to schools are now included in a complex calculation that determines certain Medicaid-related rebates that drug makers must pay to states. In this calculation, deep discount prices would have the effect of increasing drug makers' payments.

Colleges and universities say the change is having a significant impact on their health centers and the students they serve. Prices have begun skyrocketing for many popular brands of birth control. Health centers are having to reconfigure their offerings and write new prescriptions. And college students are making some tough choices, such as switching to cheaper generic brands or forgoing their privacy in order to claim their pills on their parents' insurance.

The higher prices took effect earlier this year but savvy college health providers stocked up before the changes, forestalling the impending contraceptive cost crisis. Don't just feel bad for the "very fertile" college women who will now have to suffer higher prices or a lack of privacy to get their birth control, though. The schools that received those subsidized products were making a tidy profit, too, which has now evaporated as they turn to subsidize contraceptives for their students.

Free market solutions, anyone? I hope you're happy, Republicans.

--SAM JACKSON