Strange sting by Planned Parenthood ally makes case for Texas defund
Another title for my post might be, “Andrea Grimes is no Lila Rose.”
Pro-abortion RH Reality Check reporter Andrea was horrified that her investigation of the Texas Women’s Health Program turned up “only” 13 – 13! - healthcare providers in the vicinity of Downtown Austin Planned Parenthood that will give pap smears to low income women.
Andrea was trying to make the case that the State of Texas’s court-upheld decision to exclude Planned Parenthood from its state Medicaid program will leave low income women in the lurch.
Andrea thinks having 13 healthcare providers available to fill the shoes of one Planned Parenthood is somehow deplorable.
Whose side is Andrea on again?
Andrea complained she had to weed through a list of 181 providers to find those 13. Andrea has apparently never had to deal with an insurance company as an adult, trying to find a few good names from an encyclopedia of listings.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvArIxHpLOs[/youtube]
UPDATE 9/8 10a: I thought of something else. At the end of her video Andrea dramatically details how difficult it would be for a woman to get to the 13th provider – 40 minutes by car and supposedly two hours by bus (plus a half-mile walk). This is to assume all the low-income women in Austin live close to Planned Parenthood. But the same argument could be made for those living near that 13th provider who would be forced to get to PP.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
We should fund PP because this lady is lazy, got it.
If you think PP actually provides actual health CARE and actual cancer screenings:
Show me the mammo!
Show me the mammo!
(as in mammography equipment)
Of COURSE Austin isn’t a problem! It’s the freaking CAPITAL of Texas and the ONLY liberal, blue city in the state?!? Try Odessa, Midland, Abilene or out west. Women ant get appointments for 6-12 MONTHS if at all. The Health clinics are turning them away cause they have no staff, no funding and were TOTALLY unprepared by Tom Suehs and Rick Perry.
Try doing some better research. Your lack of facts is amazingly sad.
I can also get abortions at 18 clinics in Austin BESIDES PPH. Rick Perry has accomplished NOTHING except screwing over poor women. Less clinics, less BC, less papa smears, more abortions, more sick women. And only people like you would think that’s GOOD. And BTW, thanks to Rick, two new doctors out of NYC are opening a brand new private abortion clinic in downtown Austin in December. Door to door drivers and armed security guards. GO AUSTIN!!!
She didn’t say. How far away was the closest clinic? What? You could get there in five minutes? Go TEXAS!
So Kathi, you are trying to tell me Planned Parenthood is actually turning people away? PP has a simple choice to make, they can stop providing abortions and then they can get their tax payer money back. As you said there are 18 other abortion providers in the area that do not receive tax payer dollars. I also cannot remember PP treating sickness other than STDs, the standard health clinics for the poor will adapt as they will be the one receiving the taxpayer dollars that formerly went to PP. In my experience women get better quality of care for a lower price at a public health clinic anyways, and by better qualified people who can provide comprehensive care. PP is only cheap if you are at the very bottom of their sliding scale.
KathiKorteling says:
Of COURSE Austin isn’t a problem! It’s the freaking CAPITAL of Texas and the ONLY liberal, blue city in the state?!? Try Odessa, Midland, Abilene or out west.
Good idea.
Midland TX – 7 OB/GYN’s & 1 FP/GP w/in 10 miles of 79701
Abilene TX – 8 OB/GYN’s & 2 FP/GP w/in 10 miles of 79603
Odessa TX – 12 OB/GYN’s & 2 FP/GP w/in 10 miles of 79761
So those 18 other places offer abortions but NO birth control? I find that hard to believe.
Since PP is also using our tax money to fund Obama’s campaign, I see no end of corruption until they get fully, internationally, permanently DEFUNDED. Wanna support them? Do it with your own money. Wanna support Obama? Do it with YOUR OWN MONEY. Wanna keep the gov’t out of your uterus? USE YOUR OWN MONEY.
Whoa. So 13 low-income clinics in one city is somehow not enough? In what universe? Wasserman Schultz’s?
“So 13 low-income clinics in one city is somehow not enough? “
She also complains about having to look through a list of 181 providers in order to find them. This means she technicality would have been happier had the non-low income ones not existed, because it would have been easier to find the ones she was looking for. But yeah, the conclusion of this investigation was determined before it had begun. Somehow, defunding PP would turn out to be evil.
What a sad state of affairs when 18 funding to clinics is not enough. It is not the government’s, (meaning taxpayers), responsibility to pay for women’s health care (abortions). Andrea speaks and presents herself like an intelligent woman. Maybe she should get a job and pay for the things PP offers for free. We as taxpayers should never have provided for planned parenthood. There should be plenty of kind hearted liberals with money to fund them. Oh, I forgot, liberals don’t use their own money, they use everyone else s.
“USE YOUR OWN MONEY”
So Ninek, do you feel this way about non-Catholics taxpayers having to subsidize the Catholic Church in the form of federal grants to Catholic Charities, Catholic hospitals, and all sorts of assistance to Catholic grammar and high schools? When taxpayer money goes to dioceses, it could be used for defense of criminal priests – you know, “fungible?”
And BTW, you folks don’t seem to want to address the problems that rural Texas woman are having as a result of Rick Perry’s “pro-life” policies that have resulted, as Kathi Kortling points out, in a lack of access health care for many women. But as long as there are fewer abortions, who cares if women die of cervical cancer. Right?
Good idea. Midland TX – 7 OB/GYN’s & 1 FP/GP w/in 10 miles of 79701
And if we check the WHP’s records to see how many of those individuals actually saw a WHP client in 2010–the last year for which data is available–we find that the answer is…zero! One health clinic saw 154 clients, in contrast to the 877 that PP Midland saw.
The WHP data are searchable by county rather than by zip code, so I couldn’t determine which 13 clinics Ms. Grimes found in Austin. But if we look at the data from Travis County and exclude providers that obviously do not do basic women’s health services (i.e., radiology and pathology labs), we find that a total of 20 providers served a total of 318 clients, in contrast to the Austin PP, which saw 1748. My guess is that the non-PP providers would have trouble accommodating the PP client base, which is more than five times greater than the client base of all the other providers put together.
The WHP data may be found in the appendices to the PP suit against Texas, in case anyone here wants to check the math.
When taxpayer money goes to dioceses, it could be used for defense of criminal priests
My money also goes to public school districts and college systems, some of which are defending criminal charges. How do you think those involved in the Penn State scandal made their money to defend themselves? Where did their paychecks come from?
Last I knew, everyone in our country is innocent until proven guilty and deserves a fair trial. We don’t decide whether someone is a criminal or not based on the word of almighty CC. In her world, any priest accused of a crime is automatically guilty and deserves no defense.
Last I knew, the sole intent of abortion is to still kill a human and a free country does not force their people to pay for murder.
@CC: And again, you run around claiming abortion is totally personal and has no public bearing whatsoever. You run around claiming that “my body, my choice” is the only slogan applicable here. Therefore, by your own argument, the public has no interest in funding abortions. Even abortion apologists think it’s a completely private action. Which makes it completely ridiculous to claim the public has an interest in paying for it.
So really, both sides agree on this point. Pro-life persons don’t want to fund abortions because they are morally repugnant. Abortion defenders agree there is no public interest here, so it would be outrageous if they were to demand abortions be funded by taxpayers. We agree. Problem solved, discussion over.
Alice, once again you are spot on
Planned Parenthood could stop the bleeding, literally, by shutting down their abortion practices and serving both born and unborn women. But that cash cow is sacramental in PP/Code Pink circles, and how would they ever help to liberate us poor girls if we can’t kill our babies??
“Last I knew, the sole intent of abortion is to still kill a human and a free country does not force their people to pay for murder.”
The same definition could be applied to war which is paid for by the taxpayer. And BTW, the law still doesn’t define abortion as murder. Neither do the majority of scientists and a number of faith communities. So given that there’s no consensus on this issue, it all boils down to courts and elected officials.
”Even abortion apologists think it’s a completely private action. Which makes it completely ridiculous to claim the public has an interest in paying for it.”
Choosing to give birth to a child is also a completely private action. Yet taxpayers pay for the maternity costs of women on welfare. Smoking is a completely private action. Yet taxpayers pay for the health care costs of those, on Medicaid and Medicare, who incur health care problems as a result of smoking.
And BTW, the premise of your argument is wrong because apart from states in which Medicaid funds abortions (or federal funds used for Medicaid abortions in certain cases), it is not, via the Hyde Amendment, publicly funded. But you folks still cling to the delusion that you pay for it and it’s not completely true.
But here’s the thing. Let’s pretend that your prayers are answered and Planned Parenthood shuts down and there is no more alleged public support for abortions. There will continue to be private clinics which perform abortions. What will you do then given that your argument about public funding is moot!
And BTW, Alice, what public interest was there in invading Iraq – an invasion that resulted in the deaths of many post-born. Were you as concerned about your tax money being spent on that?
CC, We pay for maternity costs cause the unborn are human beings deserving of life. And for the same reason we don’t want to pay for anybody to kill them. Get it?
CC, the money does go to the Catholic Diocese. It goes to the program funded. Unlike PP where the money goes into one pot – PP’s pot – the money is not given to the Church but to the secular organizations run by Church members. There is a big difference – namely different bank accounts at the Church, but only one bank account for PP.
Correction – CC, the money does not go to the Catholic Diocese.
My guess is that the non-PP providers would have trouble accommodating the PP client base, which is more than five times greater than the client base of all the other providers put together.
What if the other providers got more funding, instead of PP? The most recent data is from 2010, which was before Planned Parenthood was actually defunded. You can’t reasonably draw that conclusion from the available data.
Someone owes me 4 minutes and 29 seconds.
CC, you’re only demonstrating your continued inability to understand things you read. I don’t argue there is no public interest in whether the unborn lives or dies, you do that. I’m following your argument about abortion to its logical conclusion. I oppose abortion because it kills an innocent human being, and the public’s interest to protect the innocent from having their rights violated is clear and obvious. If you’re going for gotcha moments, I suggest you start by assigning to me the position I claim, rather than the one that you do. I don’t have to make responses to, or shore up the weak points in, your worldview. Those problems belong to you, not me.
Try again, starting from the top.
“and the public’s interest to protect the innocent from having their rights violated is clear and obvious.”
One more time. That’s your opinion. Meanwhile, there are a whole lot of women who don’t want their reproductive rights violated. As evidenced in Colorado and Mississippi, the public doesn’t seem interested in establishing rights (personhood) for zygotes, fetuses, etc. So about the public’s interest being served in “protecting the innocent” – not so much. If anything, we feel that society should be protected from anti-choice religious zealots like you and your church. We don’t believe that the “rights” of a fetus should supercede a post born woman’s right to abortion and birth control.
And if you believe that PP doesn’t segregate their money, enjoy the delusion.
…Do you practice missing the point? Because, if so, it really shows.
But the same argument could be made for those living near that 13th provider who would be forced to get to PP.
That would be bad. Is someone attempting to force women to go to PP rather their nearest provider?
What if the other providers got more funding, instead of PP?
What has that got to do with the WHP issue? WHP is an insurance-like program that reimburses providers per service, not a grant program. Non-PP providers aren’t going to get any more money as a result of PP being excluded from the network.
We don’t believe that the “rights” of a fetus should supercede a post born woman’s right to abortion and birth control.
yeah. My former fetus is still wondering why that is, CC. Just let me know when you’re ready to enlighten her.
X, don’t you remember? Maggie did not have the conference of personhood magically strewn upon her little body until she figured out she was wanted. See how that happens??
What has that got to do with the WHP issue? WHP is an insurance-like program that reimburses providers per service, not a grant program. Non-PP providers aren’t going to get any more money as a result of PP being excluded from the network.
You’re right, I was confusing it with Title X. My bad.
Still, the reporter did find 13 clinics that would have been able to provide her with what she needed. And there’s no indication as to what volume of total patients these other clinics see or how how many new WHP claims they would be able to handle. So I still find her argument unconvincing.
“yeah. My former fetus is still wondering why that is, CC. Just let me know when you’re ready to enlighten her.”
I already did. When she’s older she will have the capacity to determine whether she (As Amanda Marcotte puts it so well) is a baby “easy bake oven” or a woman who can make her own decisions about what happens in her uterus. So easy…..
“Do you practice missing the point? Because, if so, it really shows.”
Go ask Alice, I think she won’t know…that we don’t believe that abortion is “murder” but we do believe that women have a right to determine what they do with their bodies.
And remind me, Alice, what exactly is your point? Somehow in the “cleverness” of your argument you totally lost it.
Oh, and Alice, you didn’t respond to my questions about how taxpayers are liable for health care costs for those who voluntarily abuse their bodies. And you do know that cancer treatments are far more expensive than abortions which, in terms of welfare costs and all the ancillary costs of an unwanted pregnancy, are far more costly. Not that I mind but it’s conservative GOPPers who want to fray the safety net those “saved” “babies.”
And if you believe that PP doesn’t segregate their money, enjoy the delusion.
CC, just like they inflated 3 million visitors to 11 million “discrete client interactions”! Yeah, PP is all about supplying honest numbers.
I already did.
Yeah. And she already called out your demeaning b.s., too. And you had NOTHING to offer in rebuttal. We see right through you!
Still, the reporter did find 13 clinics that would have been able to provide her with what she needed.
Just as a point of clarification, the reporter didn’t find 13 clinics–she found 13 providers. That could include individual practitioners.
And there’s no indication as to what volume of total patients these other clinics see or how how many new WHP claims they would be able to handle. So I still find her argument unconvincing.
Well, in the Travis County numbers from 2010, the mean number of patients seen was 25 and the median was 7. You’re right that the numbers may be different now, since dozens of clinics have closed since Texas cut its family planning funding in 2011.
Just as a point of clarification, the reporter didn’t find 13 clinics–she found 13 providers. That could include individual practitioners.
I incorrectly said “13 clinics” rather than “13 providers” in my first post. Ran out of time to edit it.
…you didn’t respond to my questions about how taxpayers are liable for health care costs for those who voluntarily abuse their bodies.
No, I didn’t, because–as I said earlier–that particular logical hole is in your argument, not mine. You’re the one who runs around making the “my body, my choice” claim. The fact that this makes you logically inconsistent when you want tax funding for abortions, medical treatments in general, or cancer treatment isn’t something I need to square with. It’s something you need to square with. You’ve been poking holes in your own argument for your last two or three posts. I’m hardly going to argue that these are logical inconsistencies. They are. But they are logical inconsistencies in your argument.
Which is exactly what I said earlier. It’s not my job to make your worldview work. That’s yours. Do your own heavy lifting.
Well, in the Travis County numbers from 2010, the mean number of patients seen was 25 and the median was 7.
Really? You’re telling me that most of these health providers saw a total of no more than seven patients in FY 2010? Yikes…
You’re right that the numbers may be different now, since dozens of clinics have closed since Texas cut its family planning funding in 2011.
I don’t remember endorsing cuts to family planning on this thread or anywhere else, and it really does look like the Texas legislators have indeed gone too far in that respect. Intellectually or otherwise, I’m not obligated to defend every policy Rick Perry has put in place.
Really? You’re telling me that most of these health providers saw a total of no more than seven patients in FY 2010? Yikes…
Yes. According to a George Washington University study, the majority of providers who participated in WHP in 2010 (the most recent data) saw fewer than 10 WHP patients, and 25% saw only one.
I was referring to total patients, not just patients that happen to use WHP benefits to pay their medical bills. Furthermore, the analysis you cited (which hasn’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal) is already out of date since the state enrolled an additional 500 WHP providers (bringing the total up to 3000) to compensate for any potential loss of services resulting from Planned Parenthood’s exclusion from the program.
Still not convinced.
All the more reason to shut this monopoly down!!!