Healthcare without Planned Parenthood: Wisconsin and Texas point to dark future

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Healthcare without Planned Parenthood: Wisconsin and Texas point to dark future

Molly Redden
Tuesday 17 January 2017 11.30 GMT

In the remote western plains of Texas, the Midland-Odessa region is separated from the nearest major city by hours of open road. So when the Planned Parenthood clinic in Midland closed down in late 2013 – a casualty of legislative cuts that targeted Planned Parenthood directly – it served as an isolated experiment in what happens when the government defunds the largest women’s healthcare provider around.

“I hate to say it, but I think an awful lot of women just opted to go without care,” said Mike Austin.

Austin is chief executive of Midland Community Healthcare Services (MCHS), a federally-funded network of providers that has emerged as the only major alternative to Planned Parenthood in the area. His clinic offers all of the same services the Midland Planned Parenthood once did, including contraception, cancer screenings and STI tests, to the same kind of patients, low-income women who rely on the public safety net for their healthcare.

In fact, just before the Planned Parenthood clinic shut down, the two providers made a plan to minimize the fallout. Planned Parenthood sent nearly 5,000 patient medical records – up to 1,000 belonging to active patients – directly to MCHS.

But to Austin’s dismay, only about 100 former Planned Parenthood patients ever showed up at his door.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/17/planned-parenthood-congress-wisconsin-texas

[jodymarie aimee]

1. I keep telling you

welcome to Wisconsin. 6 years of it here, now the entire United States gets to live in my burned to the ground state.

[Runningdawg]

2. I am lucky to have a Dr who works for PP

as my general physician. Most others on my insurance plan refused to take me as a patient. I take 2 medications and skipping a dose of either causes problems.
Friday I needed a refill. For those of you not familiar with PP, at least in OK, you cannot call your Dr or PP directly. You must first be "vetted" by National PP and THEY will pass a message to your Dr. or PP, who will then call you back. Normally this process takes between 6 and 12 hours. After not receiving a call Friday or Monday, I called back around 10 am this morning. I was told no one would be available to help me until after noon. At noon I called back and received an automated message telling me the system was overloaded and to try my call again. I tried twice more, receiving the same message each time.
I then called my pharmacy and asked to speak with the manger. I described the issue and he didn't believe me. I asked him to put me on hold and to try calling my Dr. He changed his tune. I asked if he had another way to contact my Dr and he said he could send a fax and I asked him to do that.
I just received an automated call from the pharmacy telling me that refills would be indefinitely delayed because they could not contact my Dr.
I have now missed 6 doses of the needed medication, with no resolution of this problem in sight.
And so it begins.....

[Master22]

3. This is ALEC in action

Wikipedia American Legislative Exchange Council. Once you learn what it is you can Google your state and find out the congress members and companies involved. If you are in WI, go to Center for Media and Democracy they have a lot of information about it. Start watching the SB and HB laws that are being passed and pay attention to anything that is slated as an Emergency Bill. It will pass and you will never know. I have been looking at this for years.

What is odd is that when any Dem runs they never talk about it, but it is very prevalent right now and is huge. It goes into Heritage, which is on C-span, Cato...the list is long. Heritage is in Saudi Arabia...so ALEC is there also. There is a reason this right wing ideology is all over the world. They meet in secret, backed by a lot of money, but someone needs to wake people up. I used to live in AZ for a time and Brewer was Gov. On one day there was 28-30 bills changed in a day. It was very schizophrenic.