There is a big purple elephant standing in the corner of the US healthcare system

In simple terms, IOM stated today that US healthcare sucks.  It is about time someone addressed the elephant in the room.

"In a lengthy report out Thursday, the IOM wrote that U.S. medicine wastes roughly $750 billion per year, permits tens of thousands of needless deaths and bungles its mission in ways foreign to other industries." -The Hill's healthwatch blog commenting on the IOM report released today

Republican Rhetoric

Today a republican member of the US House of Representitives informed me of the reason medicare & social security have failed: birth control pills & abortion.

His rhetoric is that when social security was created the average family was having 4 children.  It was established to account for 4 children in each family growing up & paying into it.  Then along came the evil pill that lowered the amount of children to aprox 2.2.  This means that there are less people to pay into it and therefor has led to the demise.

While there are many issues to be had with this statement, I keep fixating on a specific womens-lib one. Didn't family planning give women the freedom to stop child bearing & rearing and go back to work?  Therefor doubling the work force and negating the problem of half the children?

A glimer of hope?

It seems that the Senate Republican's are being a little more rational than the House was with regards to title X (planned parenthood) funding. In today's news from National Partnership for Women and Families, the following was stated:

"In a letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Vice Chair Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Ala.) wrote, "I believe Planned Parenthood provides vital services to those in need and disagree with their funding cuts in the bill. ... I ask you to consider these programs going forward to determine if there is room for allowing continued funding."

In a separate e-mail to a constituent, Murkowski wrote, "I do believe that Planned Parenthood provides vital services to those in need and disagree with its funding cuts contained in the H.R. 1 package." She added, "From 2002-2008, Planned Parenthood received $342 million in federal taxpayer money through Title X funding alone. With these funds, Planned Parenthood has provided women throughout the U.S. with important family planning and contraceptive services as well as screening for breast and cervical cancers for low-income women. I believe it is important that Title X organizations continue to receive funding."

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) last week also announced her opposition to eliminating Title X (Politico, 3/11)."

We need to keep fighting this as it hasn't been voted on yet. Continue to contact your elected officials, continue to spread the word and raise awareness, continue to take a stand for access to reproductive health care.