Wisconsin GOP Plays Fast and Loose with Health Care 'Access'

Many health care entities cited by bill proponents as potential replacements for existing family planning clinics are unable to provide anywhere near a full spectrum of services. This disregard for the consequences of these bills sheds a disturbing light on the current legislative majority.
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

Like most parents of school-age kids, my priority last week was getting my five-year-old daughter off to her first day of Kindergarten. Unfortunately, the Wisconsin Legislature had other priorities: to double down on their obsession with defunding and closing down Planned Parenthood health care centers in our state. After one exhausting and emotional day marking an important milestone with my family, I spent the next day emotionally exhausted watching our elected leaders insist that defunding and shutting down Planned Parenthood clinics was actually going to help increase access to health care in Wisconsin.

Yes - I spent seven long hours last week at an Assembly Health Committee hearing listening to bill proponents deny the fact that taking away funding and inevitably shutting down family planning clinics in our state would prevent any Wisconsin women access to preventive health care services. Over and over again, they enthusiastically admitted their goal was to close Planned Parenthood clinics as they vehemently insisted that there would be other health care providers there to step in and assume new patients who had lost their "medical home".

And while I sat there completely heartbroken watching our elected leaders continue to play games with women's health as a means to wage a political vendetta against Planned Parenthood, the most infuriating part of the day for me turned out to be watching these legislators play so incredibly fast and loose with the term "access."

During the hearing, bill authors referred to a spreadsheet of other health care providers they insisted women could "access" if their local family planning clinic was forced to close. But their definition of access fell far short from what the public health community has long defined it to be.

As noted by the U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, there are four components of access to care: coverage, services, timeliness, and workforce. They add that access to health services means the timely use of personal health services to achieve the best health outcomes. Sadly, the GOP proposal to potentially shut down family planning clinics in more than a dozen communities in Wisconsin completely violates all four of these core principles of access.

If it was up to the bill authors: a woman would have "access" to care even if she had to travel 100 miles round trip to get a pelvic exam (regardless of whether she had the transportation means or not); a woman would have "access" to care even if she wouldn't be guaranteed confidentiality from an abusive partner; and, a woman would have "access" to family planning care even if she had to wait three weeks to see her doctor.

The truth is, for over three decades, family planning health centers in Wisconsin -- including Planned Parenthood -- have provided the quality, affordable, timely, and local care from which countless Wisconsin women have benefitted. Women of all ages and from communities both small and large have relied on local family planning clinics for preventative care like pap tests, breast exams, cervical cancer screenings, contraceptives, and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections.

Many of the health care entities cited by bill proponents as potential replacements for existing family planning clinics simply are unable (either by choice or by law) to provide anywhere near this full spectrum of services. This utter disregard for the real-life consequences of these bills sheds a disturbing light on the priorities of the current legislative majority, for whom the health of the low-income women and men who rely on these clinics is no more than an afterthought.

A new analysis by the Guttmacher Institute notes that Planned Parenthood sites are considerably more likely to offer a broad range of contraceptive methods than sites operated by other types of agencies. Specifically, 91 percent of Planned Parenthood health centers offer at least 10 of 13 reversible contraceptive methods, compared to between 48 percent and 53 percent of sites operated by other types of agencies.

The study also highlights that family planning clinics like Planned Parenthood are likely to help women who choose oral contraceptives to get their pills without having to make an additional trip to a pharmacy by offering supplies on-site. In addition, women are often able to get the care they need more quickly from Planned Parenthood than from other types of safety-net providers. In fact, sixty-three percent of Planned Parenthood health centers offer same-day appointments, compared to between 30 percent and 40 percent of sites operated by other types of agencies, and the average wait for an appointment at a Planned Parenthood health center is just 1.8 days.

Those of us who care about comprehensive women's health need to broaden this conversation about what real access looks and feels like. In addition to exposing the political vindictiveness that motivates much of this recent wave of proposals, we must take the time to make it clear what these proposals will do to real women and the health of our communities. While the political vendetta directed towards Planned Parenthood cannot be ignored, these recent attacks must also be viewed as attacks on access to basic forms of health care that the vast majority of Americans support and receive at some point in their lives. Even more importantly, for the women who rely on this network of family planning clinics to prevent unplanned pregnancies, treat STIs, and detect cancer before it metastasizes, this isn't just a political drama... It's a fight for their very wellbeing and genuine access matters!

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot