Let's Support Change We Can Believe In

What a difference an election makes. In just over two months in office, President Obama is making good on his promise to change the failed reproductive health care policies of the Bush administration: overturning the global gag rule; helping ensure access to affordable contraception for millions of women, and taking action to rescind the Bush administration's midnight HHS regulation, which was aimed at limiting the rights of patients to receive complete and accurate health care.

With a new tone in Washington, we can finally begin addressing the health care crisis in this country, and take the politics out of women's health.

In these difficult economic times and with more than 45 million Americans currently uninsured, it is critical that we work to increase, not limit, access to health care. When a patient walks into a hospital, pharmacy, or any health care center, she should be confident she will receive complete and accurate health care information and services.

Under the current rule, issued at the last minute by then-President Bush, that is not the case. Insurance companies, hospitals, and pharmacies, as well as doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel, are allowed to simply withhold services and information about, for example, contraception and HIV testing and treatment. The rule allows health care providers to deny any basic health care service based on their personal biases.

In order to overturn the Bush administration rule, President Obama issued a new proposal in March that has to undergo a period of public review. Tens of thousands of Planned Parenthood supporters have already submitted comments in favor of President Obama's commonsense fix to this unnecessary midnight regulation that jeopardizes patients' access to complete and accurate health care information and services.

But the opportunity to add your voice and speak out in support of President Obama's reversal of the current dangerous policy ends on Thursday.

With more and more families losing their health insurance and having difficulty accessing health care at all, and with at least one in four teenage girls having a sexually transmitted infection, Bush's HHS rule that limits access to health services is unconscionable. We must all speak up for patients' rights.

Click HERE to add your name to the list of people across America who support reversing Bush's midnight HHS rule.

*Cross-posted on RH Reality Check.

Comments

[TRUE BLUE AMERICAN]

Planned parenthood cares only about the money. To keep the cash flowing they lobby for the government to flip the bill, which is the taxpayer or the people. They claim to be all about womens health, but will not offer the complete truth when it comes to abortion. There is no money in a women deciding to keep the baby and walking out the door. The other problem is that people believe that they are entitled to healthcare. Your not , so work hard ,give up all luxury items and you can have healthcare
.

[MoonbeamMary]

What is it about non-profit that you don't understand? You are uninformed.

[SD Indy]

What part of "the right to life (healthcare), liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" do you NOT understand?

[SocialistDistortion]

Well as much as I hate to say this because I think he has been doing well so far, I don't fully trust Obama on this issue. He keeps saying over and over "affordable health care....affordable, affordable, affordable." What does "affordable" mean? Lowering premiums by 20 bucks a month? I think Obama is taking a step in the right direction on this, but I just don't think he'll go far enough. He'll move to the left of deregulation, but still too far to the right of universal healthcare. Forget "affordable" health care, I want free universal healthcare, modeled after the British NHS or the French system. I want to be able to walk into any hospital without having to fill out endless forms about this HMO or that HMO. If something is wrong with me, I want it to walk in, get it fixed, and walk out without the hassle of "regulation this, article that, paragraph such and such states you must not have these conditions, blah blah blah....".

Is that REALLY too much to ask?

[PlaceboStudman]

You do realize that free universal health care is an impossibility, right? Or do you not realize that the British and French tax rates are so incredibly high simply because they need to pay for the universal health care?

And as far as you think Obama might not go far enough, I fear he might go too far in his attempt to lower costs, and end up cutting services for the people who need it most, the 20% of the population who are disabled and living with a chronic condition that will not kill us, but will keep us dependent on health care for 20, 30, 40, or 50 years or more when we are born with a congenital defect that can not be prevented with simple diet and exercise, as everyone here seems to believe

[SocialistDistortion]

I look at it like this - I HATE taxes as much as anybody else. But, if the government is going to take my money, then I want my tax dollars to provide something worthwhile. I don't necessarily think you need to RAISE taxes to provide free healthcare, but rather alter where our current tax dollars are going. For example...do we REALLY need 51 cents on the dollar going toward the military and defense? The US already spends more on defense than the next 50 nations combined (or something like that, I don't remember off the top of my head). Why can't we decrease that and instead focus a larger percentage of our dollars on things just like healthcare, or education, or infrastruc­ture...thi­ngs that this country desperately needs, rather than bloating the department of defense even more when the cold war is over, we don't need 500,000 troops in 700 worldwide bases, and groups like al qaeda can't be fought by conventional means.

I don't think that's unreasonable.

[mergina]

Let's send Marriage away for good. What the hell does marriage have to do with love?

[sweepstop]

But why should a doctor be forced to perform a procedure that he or she finds morally reprehensible? There are doctors who will perform such procedures. Why force those that are unwilling to do it to perform it as well?

As an aside, would you want a doctor operating on you if he didnt believe the procedure was morally acceptable? I wouldnt. Chances are that that doctor may not have paid as much attention when learning the ins and outs of the procedure. I'd prefer a doctor who firmly believed in what they were doing.

[MoonbeamMary]

Medical personnel are protected un the Civil Rights Act to not have to perform procedures they morally object to.

[historymatters]

Medical personnel are protected on an individual basis from having to perform personally a procedure to which they object. One of the many problems with the Bush rule is that any employee of a healthcare provider (doctor's office, hospital, drugstore, etc.), from the receptionist to the janitor to the accountant, can object to a procedure AND the healthcare provider does not have to make any provision whatsoever to offer the procedure to a patient in need. Especially for people who live in rural areas and inner cities, and people in a crisis or emergency situation, this is a huge problem.

[PlaceboStudman]

sorry to double post, my post got cut off...

Why must we, the disabled, a full 20% of the population be so worried about how much our care costs when no one is willing to discuss the fact that the quality of care we receive is, in many cases killing us? What are we to do to prevent geneticly based disabilities and diseases that can not be controlled by diet, exercise and quitting smoking and drinking? What are we to do when we are put onto medications that intend to treat one ailment, such as a heart condition, that ends up resulting in kidney and/or liver failure? What is the point of going on an anti-depressant that causes suicidal thoughts??

[PlaceboStudman]

You hit the nail on the head with this line....

, it is critical that we work to increase, not limit, access to health care.

It is not only critical to increase access to health care, it is also a vital aspect of providing access to health care that we start discussing the improvements in the actual care we receive. I know I'm in the minority here, caring more about quality of care over cost of care, but one of the unspoken aspects of decreasing cost is improving quality. Why must we pay thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars over a lifetime