President Donald Trump brought up the battle cry of 'repeal and replace' with a promise to make the 2020 election a referendum on Obamacare. Though there have been many speculations about the impact of potentially repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Drs. Alicia Nobles and John W. Ayers of UC San Diego published a new study in the journal Contraception revealed that the debate is making an impact already on women's health across the United States, specifically women's contraceptive preferences.
The study also discovers a link between politics and women's health.
The ACA gives Americans access to prescription contraception exclusive of out-of-pocket costs. This access consists of IUDs, intrauterine devices which doctors favor a lot due to their effectiveness, but women shunned it because of their historically high out-of-pocket costs.
In the study, uptake of IUDs under the ACA did not only reduce women's total out-of-pocket health care costs by 40 percent but also decreased the numbers of unplanned pregnancies. But as the 'repeal and replace' debate starts heating up once more, how are women responding to potentially losing this birth control benefit?
With this new study, the group weighed in on current events with data that include the opioid crisis, Netflix's 13 Reasons Why, and #MeToo; they used the public archive of aggregate internet searches, Google Trends, where searches inform public opinion with their health.
From January 1, 2004, to October 31, 2017, a year after the presidential election, through the fraction of Google searches coming from the United States the team monitored for the three most popular reversible contraceptive methods.
This monitoring exercise included searches for IUDs (those monitoring IUD brands or IUD "Mirena," "ParaGard," "Liletta," "Skyla," and "Kyleena") were in contrast against the search for condoms or oral contraceptives.
The cumulative percent for IUDs were higher than expected the year following the 2016 election, indicating 10 to 21 million more searches than usual. Except for Nevada, IUDs searches were higher significantly in all states, and regardless Trump or Clinton won the state, the increase was consistent.
However, the team learned that searches for condoms and oral contraceptives declined or remained stable, respectively, the year after the election. It reinforced the discovery that women's increased interest in IUDs is uniquely related to the debate of ACA.
The vice chief of innovation at UC San Diego Medicine and study author, Dr. Ayers pointed out that most times, Trump eulogizes his support of women and their health on Twitter. Ayers said it is surprising he threatens to take away their birth control benefits. Trump wants more women to consider IUDs, the most effective and long-term cost-effective form of reversible birth control.
As the ACA debate once again heats up, more women are turning to IUDs, Ayers concluded that it is critically essential that health policy makers ensure that IUDs remain affordable.
