When I spoke to the nurse, she said that there was a program to provide birth control to woman whose insurance doesn't cover it, but I was pretty skeptical about qualifying for it because on paper I make a good living and would never be considered low income. Thankfully, that doesn't seem to be an issue.
Apparently there's a federal program called Title X, which is the National Family Planning Program. Though this program has existed for 40 years, I'd never heard of it before. Thankfully, Nuvaring is covered under Title X, so now all I have to do is have a nurse visit once every three months and I'll get my birth control from them for free! This is such a huge relief, I can't even tell you. Thankfully, I have Wednesday mornings off, so I won't need to use sick or personal time for these visits.
I suspect that I might have been able to get insurance to cover it since I have been diagnosed with menorrhagia, but since my doctor is fully booked for the next three months, and the claim would have to be sent to insurance, who knows how long it would take to get that all sorted out.
Either way, I am so glad this program exists. I'm feeling pretty relieved, though still paranoid that something else is going to come up. Also, I kept thinking through out this whole debacle how lucky I am to have a car. My doctor's office (she moved about six months ago) is a very nice facility, but it's a 30 minute drive from my house and the nearest bus stop from there is 2.5 miles away on roads that often don't have sidewalks. When I went to pick up my first Title X birth control, they only had one ring in stock, so I have to make another trip out there in a couple weeks to get more. I'm certainly not complaining, but it seems like if you don't have insurance, you either have to spend a lot of time or a lot of money trying to not have a baby.
Still, I'm grateful this program exists, and I'm happy to be able to tell other people about it.
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