Of all the arguments against providing contraceptives at public expense, the most easily disproved (not the most pernicious, just the most obvious facile lie) is that it "increases the cost of health insurance for all payers." Think about it:WASHINGTON -- While Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) continues to wait out the state's Senate Democrats on his budget bill that would strip collective bargaining rights from public employee unions, a growing number of Wisconsin's abortion-rights advocates worry that they have become his next target.
In 2009, Wisconsin passed a "contraceptive equity" law that requires health insurance plans in the state that cover prescription drugs to include contraceptives. ...
Walker's budget released this week would repeal the 2009 law. His budget summary called it an "unacceptable government mandate on employers with moral objections to these services," adding that it "increases the cost of health insurance for all payers."
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In other words, a fiscal conservative... one watchful of the public dollar, but aware that no administration in America can get away with letting babies starve to death... would cover family planning services through partially state-funded clinics such as Planned Parenthood. $140m isn't chump change; a true fiscal conservative would jump at the chance to save it for mere pennies on the dollar in contraceptive costs.,,,
,,, Planned Parenthood pointed to a 2008 statement by the state's health department that said expanding family planning services prevented an estimated 11,064 unplanned pregnancies and saved nearly $140 million in expenditures that would have been used to cover the births and health care costs of those children.
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But Walker is no conservative. He is, rather, a religious radical Hell-bent [sic] on controlling women by whatever means he can find. Like so many of the nut-cases, he opposes not just abortion but birth control. He thinks all women's bodies belong to him, not in the Newt Gingrich sense, but that all of them should be under his control, by law.
Is it clear yet why he is so hated (60% disapproval) in the state that just elected him? If there are any true conservatives left among Republans in the Senate or Assembly, let them come forward now and stop this utter folly... or be prepared to go down with Walker, sooner or later.
The attack on Planned Parenthood is a national thing as well thanks to Mike Pence. The estimates are that family planning provided by Planned Parenthood prevented over a million unwanted pregnancies nationwide last year. Couple that with HIV and cancer screening and the impact on the nations health and especially that of women is huge.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, fallenmonk, there are few institutions that embody the term "public health" as much as Planned Parenthood does. And yes, I could probably recite the arguments in its favor in my sleep: more than two decades ago, the local Planned Parenthood was my first client in my then-fledgling IT contracting business. When Scott Walker says that hammering Planned Parenthood is what people elected him to do, he is surely lying or deluded... I'm betting on baldfaced lying.
ReplyDeleteequals neo-Federalist dictatorship
ReplyDeletemandt, I am pleased to note that the good people of Wisconsin are having none of what Walker is peddling. Remember the historical tradition of labor organizing in Wisconsin? Those kids in the square and in the Capitol in Madison haven't forgotten, either. And neither, I am increasingly persuaded, has the American electorate. With any luck, the Orange Boner and his crew could give us the Second Age of Organized Labor, not as a gift but as an indirect consequence of their own bloody stupidity. Notwithstanding Obama's campaign slogan, what we are witnessing is not, I think, "the oh-dash-it-all of hope," after all!
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