The Oklahoma legislature is considering a bill to dictate where Oklahoma prioritizes state and federal funds, which one lawmaker says is designed to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood clinics. Rep. Doug Cox (R), an emergency room physician, said that if Planned Parenthood was not available, many women and children would not be able to receive counseling, cancer screenings, and children’s services.

The bill, HB 2324, would re-prioritize the state’s family planning grants and public funding so that the money went to public entities first then nonpublic and federally qualified health centers. Essentially, the prioritization would put Planned Parenthood at the end of the line for grants and cut off its funding. Cox called the bill a “knee-jerk reaction” to the national debate about Planned Parenthood and abortion that would hurt the women of Oklahoma:

About 70 percent of the women going to Planned Parenthood clinics in Oklahoma receive Medicaid, and the others are low income, he said. They would be unable to receive counseling, cancer tests and children’s services if Planned Parenthood clinics weren’t available. [...]

“I don’t know why we’re confusing abortion with family planning,” Cox said. “I suspect that if it wasn’t for family planning the amount of women contributing to society and the Legislature and the workforce that makes this country great would be far different.

“A lot of them would be home barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen,” Cox said.

“I don’t want to revert to those times. I don’t want to punish Oklahoma women for getting healthier.”

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jason Murphey (R), would not say if his bill would prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving state or federal money for family planning or counseling services. But last year, Murphey tried to take $460,000 from a federal nutrition program administered by Planned Parenthood, which serves 9,300 people in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His bill would have redirected the funds to other groups that do not offer abortion referral services.

Our guest blogger is Emily Oshima, Research Associate/Policy Analyst with the Health Policy team at American Progress.

Despite recent political retractions and legal affronts, the individual mandate was first proposed by conservative economist Stuart Butler in the 1989 Heritage Foundation paper Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans. In it, Butler detailed what he called a “National Health System for America,” with the first of four objectives listed as “All Americans should be guaranteed access to affordable health care.” We agree.

In a recently released paper, Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress, and Topher Spiro, Managing Director of Health Policy at the Center, systematically review the evidence for the individual mandate to purchase health care insurance as an “essential pillar” of health care reform. Tanden and Spiro examine both successful and unsuccessful models from U.S. states and abroad to illustrate how critical a mandate is in achieving near universal insurance coverage while maximizing bang for the healthcare buck.

For instance, Switzerland implemented a mandate in 1996 and less than one percent of the population is currently uninsured as a result. The Swiss also spend approximately $2,000 less per person on healthcare than Americans and enjoy the second longest life expectancies in the world. The provision has also succeeded in Massachusetts, where the mandate not only led to a 98 percent coverage rate, but also strengthened employer-based coverage, while decreasing hospital admissions and length of hospital stays.

A less successful example is New Jersey, which prohibited insurers from denying coverage to any individual, regardless of health status, and allowed residents to purchase insurance directly from an insurer, instead of through an employer, in 1993. These reforms were implemented without an individual mandate and attempted to ensure that those with medical needs were not denied critical coverage. But the result was a catastrophe –- older, more costly individuals enrolled in coverage, causing premiums to rise by more than 150 percent in four years. Consequently, enrollment declined sharply – by nearly 50 percent in the same period – leading to lower coverage rates and higher costs for those who needed coverage most due to adverse selection.

Although the mandate is easily the most controversial aspect of health care reform, numerous independent analyses show that it not only will achieve near-universal coverage, but will also:

– Significantly reduce the cost of uncompensated care

– Lower premiums in both the direct-purchase market and market for employer-based coverage

– Increase the number of small businesses that offer coverage

– Increase enrollment in employer-based coverage

– Increase the cost-effectiveness of reform

For more on the importance of the mandate, check out the paper.

Virginia Del. Mark Cole (R) is sponsoring a bill that would eliminate Medicaid funding for abortions.

Now, legislators are continuing their assault on women’s access to abortion with HB 62, a measure that would prevent Medicaid from covering abortions for low-income women when a doctor finds that the fetus “would be born with a gross and totally incapacitating physical deformity or mental deficiency.” A Senate committee approved the House bill Thursday, sending it to the full chamber. The House already passed the bill.

The bill’s sponsor Del. Mark Cole (R) dismissed criticism that the policy could force the state’s poorest women to give birth to mortally deformed fetuses that have no chance of survival after delivery, arguing that religious people shouldn’t have to fund abortions:

“Why should the most vulnerable women in Virginia be forced to carry a doomed pregnancy to term,” Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, angrily asked Cole.

Cole is backed by advocates from anti-abortion and religious groups including the Virginia Roman Catholic Diocese. He contends that it’s unjust to force people with strong religious or moral objections to the procedure to pay taxes that underwrite publicly funded abortions.

“We’re not going to force the taxpayers, many of them who think it’s immoral … to pay for that abortion,” Cole said. His bill, like current federal policy, would allow public funds in Virginia to pay for abortions only in cases of rape, incest or pregnancies that imperil a woman’s life.

After the House approved the bill, Del. Charniele Herring (D) said that if HB 62 passes the legislature and is signed by Gov. Bob McDonnell (R), then “Virginia will show itself as a state that lacks compassion for the poorest women among us. It is time to stop beating up on the poor and destroying our safety net.” The Virginia Pro-Choice Coalition tried to make the same argument yesterday to the Senate committee. According to the group’s statement, “HB 62 will leave low-income women in Virginia with no options for a pregnancy that has gone tragically wrong.”

Issa's all-male birth control panel

Democrats had originally planned to have Rev. Barry Lynn, a prominent supporter of the separation of Church and State, testify, but decided that a woman’s voice was needed, as every single other witness was a man. They tried bring in someone who has been personally affected by the issue — Sandra Fluke, a law student at Georgetown, which is affiliated with the Catholic Church and does not insure birth control for students — but Issa refused.

Appearing on Fox News with host Greta Van Susteren last night, Issa defended the decision, saying Fluke was unqualified to speak and that her first hand experience “wasn’t in any way related” to the issue at hand:

ISSA: They then wanted a different witness, a college student, who really didn’t belong on that panel for obvious reasons. [...]

She had a compelling story, a very sad story of a classmate who developed an ovarian cyst that might have been prevented by using contraception in another way, one that by the way, the Catholic bishop and everyone else there said is fully allowed, under their faith. But it was one of those things where her story was compelling, but it wasn’t in any way related to the point of the stated reason for hearing.

Watch it:

Of course, while Issa and other conservatives has tried to claim that the birth control issue is exclusively about religious liberty, it unquestionably about women’s health as well. To silence a women with firsthand experience by claiming her voice is irrelevant is ludicrous and suggests Issa afraid to let the other side tell its story, as most Americans disagree with his position.

Catholic colleges may be okay with using contraception to treat health conditions on paper, but as Fluke’s story suggests, in reality, such a policy can still limit access and endanger women’s health.

Sandra Fluke, the woman Republicans prevented from testifying at yesterday’s House Oversight Committee hearing, says she was “stunned” at Chairman Darrel Issa’s (R-CA) decision to keep her from discussing the consequences of limiting women’s access to affordable contraception at a hearing focused on Preside Obama’s birth control requirement. “I was so stunned when Chairman Issa made the decision to not allow me to speak…and to say that I was not an appropriate witness and that those women’s stories were not appropriate for this committee,” Fluke said last night on MSNBC’s The Ed Show. “I cannot think of who would be more appropriate for the committee to hear from than the women who are affected by this policy, whose lives were affected.”

The third-year Georgetown Law student went on to tell the story of her friend who couldn’t afford her birth control — at $100 per month — and was refused insurance coverage for the medication, despite its medical necessity. Shortly thereafter, she developed a massive cyst on her ovary and underwent a surgery that may have jeopardized her abilities to conceive a child:

FLUKE: What ultimately happen is she that had to have that ovary surgically removed. As a result of that, of course she would have problems conceiving a child, but even more, it just hasn’t stopped for her. She since the surgery has experienced symptoms of early menopause and her doctors are very concerned that at the age of 32 she is entering early menopause, which means that there will be nothing any doctor can do to help her to conceive a child and it will also put her at increased risk for cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis. And that’s where she was this morning when I was attempting to tell her story to the public and to members of Congress, she was at the doctor’s office trying to cope with the symptoms she’s experiencing.

Watch it:

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