Last week, the article “Obama Goons at CMS go after States Defunding Planned Parenthood,” highlighted CMS officials targeting States that attempt to defund Planned Parenthood. At the end, a link to the Planned Parenthood website indicated services the organization claimed to provide at their facilities was available at various other facilities. There was only one service unique to Planned Parenthood, not provided by others — the baby murder mill for profit involving selling aborted baby parts.
On Friday, the House Oversight Committee drafted a letter to Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, requesting “seven documents or pieces of information be handed over next week.” Of particular interest is the last request of documentation made by the committee.
7. Identify, specifically, what procedures, services or other medical treatments are available only or exclusively at a Planned Parenthood affiliate or health center that are covered by either a state’s Medicaid program or a health plan sold via a state exchange or HealthCare.gov under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Do not include services or procedures that could otherwise be provided by a private health care provider.
The committee sent a similar letter to Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Signed and authored by Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the letters specifically mention the undercover video implicating “Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliates in potentially unlawful transactions involving fetal tissue.” The letters acknowledged the videos exposing PP representatives discussing demand “for certain body parts,” how consent is solicited from patients, and procedural methods used by “doctors” to secure intact tissues. The content of the videos, labeled “disturbing,” raises the question regarding the use of federal funds to finance potentially illegal activity.
Moreover, “Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian non-profit, and the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the education and research arm of the Susan B. Anthony List, paired together to release a series of maps and data that shows the existence of thousands of community health clinics that could serve as options for women.” Released this past Friday, the same day as the House Oversight Committee letters to PP and Burwell, these two groups joined to counter claims that defunding of Planned Parenthood would be detrimental to women “seeking affordable health care.” The two groups discovered and provided maps indicating there were “13,540 clinics provide comprehensive healthcare for women across the country, compared to the approximately 700 facilities Planned Parenthood says it operates.”
According to The Blaze:
The two organizations argue that should Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading abortion provider, be stripped of its taxpayer funding, the federal money could be absorbed by any of these other clinics. A senior legal counsel at ADF told The Blaze that with the organizations wanted to make sure that “as people are discussing Planned Parenthood and its receiving of taxpayer dollars, they have the facts.”
“The bottom line is that Planned Parenthood is not a necessary evil — it’s an unnecessary one,” Casey Mattox, who focuses on human life issues, told TheBlaze in an interview. “There are plenty of other healthcare options for women that offer far more comprehensive services.”
Mattox said that their data only shows the more than 13,000 public health options women have across the country, which doesn’t include private doctors or private practice.
Planned Parenthood receives $500 million dollars of taxpayer money annually. According to Mattox, loss of those funds would not be detrimental to PP at all since it gets revenues from other venues. That same $500 million dollars redirected to public health providers could provide services to more individuals or expand current services.
Professor of Health Law and Policy at George Washington University Sara Rosenbaum claimed “if Planned Parenthood ceased to exist, the other healthcare facilities would not be equipped to absorb the abortion provider’s patients.”
Rosenbaum stated, “The notion that you could literally overnight defund providers serving a couple million people and think health centers — even if they’re right nearby, which is not always the case — could just magically absorb patients, I think shows an astounding naivety in healthcare. You can map all you want and the fact of the matter is health centers are not magicians and health care doesn’t work this way.”
Rosenbaum’s choice of words is interesting. Is she claiming that all Planned Parenthood facilities serve “a couple million people” total, a group of PP facilities serve that number in a specific area or what? She relies on the fallacy of “access” which was covered in a previous article here at Freedom Outpost.
Some advocates of Planned Parenthood might use “access” meaning the distance an individual would travel to receive services. Again, this equates to a straw man argument as, once again, Obamacare plans established networks resulting in individuals traveling unreasonable distances to attain care due to increased narrowing of networks. As previously stated, other medical providers in the PP areas can provide the same services. Moreover, Medicaid members are eligible to receive non-emergency transport services to their medical services providers, unlike many who have Obamacare.
It’s likely that Prof. Rosenbaum has never worked as a healthcare services provider in any healthcare venue providing services in this country. Yet, Prof. Rosenbaum speaks with authority in stating absolutes. While she cites only health centers, assuming community health centers, services are available through other providers funded by Medicaid, Obamacare, and other venues. Distance should be a non-issue with non-emergency transport services for Medicaid members and Obamacare’s plan provider networks resulting in increased distances others may need to travel for healthcare that might produce a hardship is acceptable to the government. If Planned Parenthood’s entire operation serves “a couple million” nationwide, surely it would not be difficult for those “served” to find other care providers.
Here’s a suggestion for Sara Rosenbaum. Before you claim to know anything about health care as a Juris Doctorate educated in “policy,” you might consider working as a nurse, nurse’s aide or other provider in varied health care settings to know what services are available, the population served and the ability to increase patient load, instead of “devoting your professional career to ‘health justice’, which is a snazzy way of advocating for government involvement in health care. Solutions for health care for America’s population is better left to those who provide health care services, not bureaucrats, politicians or so-called “health policy experts.”
Other critics claim defunding Planned Parenthood would “destroy ‘progress’ and access to sex education, especially for those who aren’t taught in a school class.”
First, schools are not responsible for teaching sex education, period. In looking at sex education taught in school, these programs expose children as young as five to immorality, debauchery and subject matter inappropriate for the age level of understanding. Education of children in the area of sex education belongs to the parents, whom God charges with the responsibility of teaching their children. Schools “may teach” some form of education considered “sexual” in nature; however, it remains the responsibility of the parents to teach their children about sex, the responsibility of engaging in sex (diseases, AIDS/HIV and pregnancy), and morals and values surrounding sex. Defenders of Planned Parenthood would rather keep that education away from parents since the main form of sex education outside the home involves promiscuity, “do what feels good and here’s how,” and “fixing pregnancy is easy — we go in and murder your baby.”
If destroying “progress” means stopping the baby murder mill for profit and ending corruption of our children through Planned Parenthood’s “sex education,” this nation could stand to stop “progress” in its tracks for a bit.
Another portion of the Planned Parenthood issue is its federal funding with taxpayer dollars, which is unconstitutional, and the overwhelming defense of Planned Parenthood by government officials in HHS, as well as politicians. Again, “follow the money, honey.” Guaranteed, some government officials and politicians have bedded down with PP receiving income from their “nefarious” activities. It all boils down to money, regardless of the claims made about “women’s healthcare.”
Don’t forget to Like Freedom Outpost on Facebook, Google Plus, & Twitter. You can also get Freedom Outpost delivered to your Amazon Kindle device here.
Tagged with
