Hey, nothing matters if it only serves 3 million people.
Only 1.5 million Americans are HIV positive. Why do we need HIV clinics? There are only a few hundred thousand heroin addicts in the US. Who gives a shit, amirite? They can just go get their methadone at a family doctor like everyone else. Only about 800,000 people use hospice care a year. Why don’t they just go to the Minute Clnic or something?
I just read on the HHS website that the grants provided to FQHCs do not cover Pap smears.
Is having cervical cancer the default position, or is not having cervical cancer the default position? I always get things like this confused.
Only WOMEN need pap smears. Therefore, that procedure doesn’t matter. So. …who cares?
Isn’t maintaining the status quo generally a conservative position, rather than a progressive one?
And PP doesn’t provide mammograms, despite a few posters insisting that they do.
I’m neither American nor a woman…
But that’s not going to stop me from commenting
Speaking as a Father of two daughters, I love the idea of Planned Parenthood and similar services.
I don’t care what you call the organisation - PP, community healthcare, woman’s health whatever.
I love that when they reach the appropriate age, my daughters will be able to visit a clinic dedicated to “Woman’s Health Issues” and get sound, non judgemental, competent advice on whatever issues they might want to ask about -
If that includes things like PAP Smears, breast exams, pregnancy and contraception advice - all the better.
They NEED good information, they need access to competent advice and services. If, for whatever reason, they don’t have the money or don’t feel comfortable visiting the family doctor I want them to have access to such services - it can only be a nett benefit to them personally and to society.
I have seen what happens when there is no proper access to such services and the picture is not pretty.
Like it or not, abortion forms an integral part of such reproductive health issues, and while I don’t want my kids to ever be in the position of having an abortion, I would support the need of any “PP like” organisation to be providing them
Circling back, because this is actually important in this discussion.
Not exactly. What policy has prioritized, via mandates in PPACA, is ready access to preventative medicine, which is how contraceptives – and annual gynecological visits – are classed. (Along with annual checkups, vaccinations and a few other things.) That’s why every insurance plan must provide these things with no copay now, because the prevention of illness and disease is an obvious priority, and should be. And we’ve covered how contraceptives are used not merely to prevent unwanted pregnancy, but to treat a host of gynecological disorders, but we haven’t really touched on their importance in actually planning pregnancy. Preparing for pregnancy and having adequate spacing between pregnancies (at least a year, 18 months minimum is better) are very underplayed aspects of maternal and fetal health. A public policy that didn’t address this most basic aspect of giving every child the healthiest start in life possible, it would be a failed public policy.
In a given calendar year, a Planned Parenthood clinic will see 2,950 birth control patients, compared with 750 per year at a public health center or 330 at a FQHC. Planned Parenthood clinics are 10% of the public funded contraceptive providers in the country by number, but they serve 36% of the patients who use that funding. Given the lack of access to pap smears (along with other basic gynecological care) at FQHCs, it’s a fair bet that many people who get primary care at a FQHC get their reproductive care at a PP clinic.
PP clinics are specifically tailored for this purpose; they have a system, they have staff who specialize in reproductive healthcare. The number of clinics or the number of patients seen per clinic doesn’t tell the full story of what care is given to who, and how, and if that care is timely (rather important where contraceptives, STD care and cancer screenings are concerned) and efficient.
In Texas, when they excluded Planned Parenthood from the Texas Women’s Health Program (TWHP), 9% fewer patients were seen overall under that program in the next year – but in western Texas, where two Planned Parenthood clinics closed and no new clinics funded under the TWHP were opened, 40% fewer patients received care covered by TWHP funding. Part of that was the inability of existing clinics to absorb the patient load, but another part of that was that other clinics didn’t have Planned Parenthood’s sliding fee structure and former PP patients who are uninsured and low income weren’t able to afford care at the other clinics. Two of every 5 PP patients in west Texas no longer have access to contraceptives – or STD testing and care, pap smears, breast exams, or referrals to next level care with connections to grant programs to help pay for it. That is a crisis, (particularly in a time when access to healthcare is being expanded, not contracted, nationally) and that is what happens when people play politics with healthcare.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that if Planned Parenthood is defunded on the federal level, that up to 25% of its patients would lose all access to care, and increase government costs by up to $130 million because of the increase in unintended pregnancy.
(Cite for all that is Stat check: No, women couldn’t just “go somewhere else” if Planned Parenthood closed | Vox)
Good post, tumbleddown.
Yes, I’m tired of you liberals who want to wreck everything without even explaining what the problem is.
I’m the one saying we should fund PP and all other clinics. That would mean Pap smears and mammograms for everybody! You, on the other hand, seem to have a beef with Pap smears.
But Planned Parenthood, like nearly all family doctors, does provide necessary referrals to radiology centers that do provide them. Places that do mammograms are generally specialty centers that you can’t book directly to.
Pap smears are not like mammograms. They are needed much more often, and don’t require special machinery. Furthermore, Pap smears are directly tied to birth control. For most women on the pill, you go in to the clinic once a year to get a Pap smear and a new prescription. That’s the bread and butter of reproductive health.
Worst. Entrée. Ever.
My family doctor doesn’t provide mammograms, either. Not my gynecologist. If my doctor decides i need one, they refer me to a facility that actually does perform that procedure. The same way that Planned Parenthood does.
It initially autocorrected to “beer with Pap smears,” which I think is a medical school hazing ritual.