Source: The Daily Tarheel
Late last month, Gov. Roy Cooper announced that North Carolina Medicaid will now cover the over-the-counter contraceptive pill Opill at no cost to Medicaid users.
It is the latest in a series of moves by the Cooper administration to increase contraception access in the state. In 2021, Cooper signed a law passed by the North Carolina General Assembly allowing pharmacists, not just physicians, to prescribe birth control pills.
However, pharmacists still had to engage in time-consuming counseling to assess a patient’s medical eligibility for prescription birth control. Many pharmacists chose not to do it because their time was not reimbursed by Medicaid.
So in January, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services announced that pharmacists can enroll as Medicaid providers, allowing them to be reimbursed for their clinical services. The move was highly effective – there is at least one participating pharmacy in 93 of the 100 counties statewide.
Cooper’s latest announcement makes contraception access for Medicaid participants even simpler. “Now Medicaid will pay for the over-the-counter Opill, so someone can walk into a Walgreens or a pharmacy, take the Opill off the shelf and just be able to bring it back to the pharmacy counter and bill Medicaid for it,” said state health director Elizabeth Cuervo Tilson.
“By having a point of access be our pharmacies, we want to increase access to everybody,” Tilson added. “It’ll be particularly beneficial for our rural areas.”
