Nurx.com Offers Free Birth Control in Response to Contraceptive Mandate Rollback

  SAN FRANCISCO, CA - 10/06/2017 (PRESS RELEASE JET)

This morning, the Trump Administration released a ruling that expands the exemptions of employers or insurers required to cover birth control. This effort to limit preventative health care comes at the expense of millions of women who depend on this mandate to practice their reproductive rights.

In response to this ruling, Nurx.com is offering free birth control to new users who use the promo code ‘ACA Lives.’ Nurx is a telemedicine startup, based in San Francisco, focused on making birth control as well PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) more accessible to everyone. With the app, users can get a prescription from a doctor and have their medication delivered right to their door.

New users will receive a $30 credit, which equates to up to two months of free birth control with the promo code, ‘ACA Lives.’ After choosing their birth control type and brand, users answer a few questions and enter their shipping and insurance information for a licensed physician to review. Once the review is complete, the doctor will issue and fill the prescription, which will be delivered to their home at no additional cost. The promo code “ACA Lives: can be entered during checkout through the month of October, 2017.

 The Affordable Care Act, requires health plans to cover at least one form of the 18 FDA-approved contraceptives. This coverage provides birth control to women without any outside costs and limiting this mandate will once again, force women to pay more for their reproductive care.

Our Medical Director, Dr. Jessica Knox, released this statement against the ruling, “Most of our users are young women busy building a life for themselves, and a child (or another child) does not fit into their current plans or goals. By using Nurx, these women are responsibly practicing their reproductive rights. The contraceptive mandate is more than a covered health cost, it gives women the agency to prioritize their life choices.”

A recent study by the Journal of American Medical Association, found that 69 percent of Americans support the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate, and for good reason. According to the National Women’s Law Center, roughly 55 million women now receive contraception and other preventive services with no out-of-pocket costs because of the Affordable Care Act. In 2015, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found that the ACA is saving oral contraceptive users an average of $255 a year and $248 for women with an IUD.  

"We strongly oppose any attempts to restrict access to reproductive health care. Women should be able to access health care on their own terms; not on Donald Trump’s,” said co-founder and CEO of Nurx, Hans Gangeskar. “We at Nurx are committed to serve as a low-cost option for women and continue to deliver birth control for free.”

"Birth control pills have been used for decades, and with such long-term monitoring, have been found to be overwhelmingly safe,” said Nurx’s Medical Director, Dr. Jessica Knox. “So safe, in fact, that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has strongly recommended that the pills be made available over-the-counter, as is common internationally. The pill remains prescription-only throughout the United States today, but with our app, we’re making birth control more accessible than ever."

“Research shows that the easier and more affordable birth control is, the more women will use it,” explains Dr. Edvard Engesaeth, a medical doctor and co-founder of Nurx. “Women should not have to jump through these unnecessary hoops, just to access birth control.”

The app works for both new and existing birth control users and the service and shipping are often free to anyone with health care coverage. For uninsured patients, Nurx can connect the user with brands for as low as $15, and delivery is still free.

About Nurx

Nurx is a telemedicine startup based in San Francisco, CA, focusing on making PrEP and birth control more accessible to everyone through their app. With the app, users can get a prescription from a doctor and have their medication delivered right to their door. The app is currently available in Texas, California New York, Washington state, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Virginia, Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, and the District of Columbia. Nurx also plans to expand to more than 20 states in the coming weeks. With the rapid expansion, Nurx is currently hiring full-stack, front-end, and dev-ops engineers, who are also passionate about increasing access to health care. Nurx engineers will be foundational architects in building the tools and systems needed in a new model of health care access around the world. For more information, visit Nurx.com.