That's courtesy of a ruling by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that obliterates any pretense that the sexes should be treated differently in the workplace. It's the easy way or the hard way. We recommend the former, in which Congress passes the long-stagnating Equity in Prescription Insurance and Contraceptive Coverage Act. That's a road they have already started down, though it promises to be time-consuming and expensive. Potentially the class could include upwards of a hundred female employees.
Women everywhere pay, and pay.
Women who want only two children depend on contraception for about three decades of their lives. During those years, women spend 68 percent more than men on health care, with much of that gap created only by gender. The EEOC ruling, while extremely positive for litigation purposes, affects only the two women who filed complaints, including the Bartell's pharmacist. If only Congress will see it that way.