Attacking the Rights of Women is Par for the Course With These People

Senator Hillary Clinton points out a case of deranged wingnuttery from the Bush Administration:

The Bush administration is up to its old tricks again, quietly putting ideology before science and women's health. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is poised to put in place new barriers to accessing common forms of contraception like birth control pills, emergency contraception and IUDs by labeling them "abortion." These proposed regulations set to be released next week will allow healthcare providers to refuse to provide contraception to women who need it. We can't let them get away with this underhanded move to undermine women's health and that's why I am sounding the alarm.

These rules pose a serious threat to providers and uninsured and low-income Americans seeking care. They could prevent providers of federally-funded family planning services, like Medicaid and Title X, from guaranteeing their patients access to the full range of comprehensive family planning services. They'll also build significant barriers to counseling, education, contraception and preventive health services for those who need it most: low-income and uninsured women and men.

The regulations could even invalidate state laws that currently ensure access to contraception for many Americans. In fact, they describe New York and California's laws requiring prescription drug insurance plans to provide coverage for contraceptives as part of "the problem." These rules would even interfere with New York State law that ensures survivors of sexual assault and rape receive emergency contraception in hospital emergency rooms.

Here's the link to HillPac, and a letter you can sign protesting this outrage.

--WS

Policy Trumps Public Health

It should surprise no one that a Surgeon General’s report on global health issues was quashed because it did not advance the Bush administrations rigid, monolithic political agenda. That is the charge leveled by current and former public health officials familiar with the report.

It seems the ideologue-in-charge was put off by the reality of a link between poverty and poor health. The squelched report called on the U.S. to lead an effort to combat wide-spread diseases as an integral part of our foreign policy objectives. It also challenged corporations to help improve the living conditions in the nations where they operate.

Release of the report was blocked by Richard Steiger, a movement-conservative ideologue and god-son of former President George H.W. Bush who was appointed to run the Office of Global Health Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services.

The report, “Call to Action on Global Health” was commissioned by then-Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona, who recently cited the suppression of this report as evidence that the Bush administration puts an ideological tweak on science to advance their agenda, or the science gets ignored. Camona related an incident to lawmakers: As he was fighting to get the report released, a senior official, apparently exasperated with Camona’s insistence on being grounded in reality finally told him flat-out “You don’t get it. This will be a political document, or it will not be released.”

Thomas Novotny, a former assistant surgeon general who ran the global health office before Steiger, said, "It's embarrassing, just ridiculous that the report hasn't come out." Novotny, who served at HHS in the Clinton and in both Bush administrations, said that many nations have made health issues central to their foreign relations and trade policies, but that the United States has been reluctant to embrace that idea.

"It made perfect sense for the surgeon general to take up the issue because the U.S. used to be a leader in this field," Novotny said. "For the nation's top doctor to be unable to release the report shows that leadership is gone."

A former career official at the HHS, Richard Walling, asserted that the report was directly blocked by Steiger, who “always had his political hat on. I don't think public health was what his vision was. As far as the international office was concerned, it was a political office of the secretary. . . . What he was looking for, and in general what he was always looking for, was, 'How do we promote the policies and the programs of the administration?' This report didn't focus on that."

On June 30, 2006, a Steiger aide sent an e-mail saying that the report should not be cleared for public distribution: "While we believe the subject matter of the draft is important, we disagree with the style, tone and messaging. We believe this document should be focused tightly on the Administration's major priorities in global health so the American public can understand better why these issues should be important to them. As such, the draft should be a policy statement, albeit one that is evidence based and draws on the best available science."

I am always heartened when evidence is treated as an afterthought. Aren’t you?

When these jokers leave, by whatever mechanism they depart, the practical among us know that it is going to take a decade (at least) to root out the Loyal Bushie career hires, and set the departments they have thoroughly fucked up back right.