During Bobby Jindal’s two terms as governor, his administration has blocked Medicaid expansion in Louisiana, cut public health care funding to the bone, closed mental health facilities, closed the Baton Rouge General-Mid City emergency room, closed the publicly funded Earl K. Long Medical Center in Baton Rouge, and has not adequately funded the new University Medical Center in New Orleans.
A 50-state study puts Jindal’s Louisiana in second-to-last place for children’s health outcomes.
Under Jindal’s tenure as governor, Louisiana has had some of the highest rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis and HIV/AIDS in the nation. Teen pregnancy and teen birth rates remain stubbornly high. While abortion rates have decreased around the country, they have increased in Louisiana.
Jindal’s administration has repeatedly blocked legislation that would call for mandatory, age-appropriate, medically accurate sexual-health education in schools. Last year Jindal banned Planned Parenthood from providing sex education in Louisiana public schools.
And now Jindal wants to cut health care options in Louisiana even more.
Jindal is attempting to end the Medicaid contract with Planned Parenthood. Politicians in Arizona, Indiana, North Carolina, and Tennessee have tried and failed to exclude Planned Parenthood from public health programs like Medicaid. Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reminded Jindal that it’s a violation of federal law to prevent Medicaid patients from obtaining services, including family planning services, from any qualified provider.
Defunding Planned Parenthood and terminating Medicaid contracts won’t harm women’s health care services, Jindal claims. He asserts that Planned Parenthood is just one of many providers in the Baton Rouge and New Orleans areas and that shutting it down does not jeopardize access. This is simply not true.
Over the past seven years, the Office of Public Health has drastically cut funding for family-planning services in Louisiana, a state already unable to meet the health care needs of the most vulnerable because of a significant shortage of Medicaid-affiliated providers.
By defunding Planned Parenthood, Jindal threatens health care services for more than 5,200 women, men and young people who rely on Medicaid for care at Planned Parenthood health centers in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
Planned Parenthood’s mission in Louisiana is to provide access to high quality health care and education services with a focus on prevention and contraception.
Medicaid covers basic preventive health care such as lifesaving cancer screenings, well-woman exams, birth control and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections. The men and women who benefit from this funding often have limited health care access, and Planned Parenthood is often their primary health care provider.
Louisiana needs more health care — not more of Jindal’s roadblocks and political theater.
Planned Parenthood has been the leading reproductive health care provider in Louisiana for the past three decades. Our health centers in Baton Rouge and New Orleans received more than 15,000 health care visits last year alone.
Planned Parenthood is currently constructing a larger health center on South Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans. Once open, our new health center will be able to more than double health care services such as life-saving cancer screenings, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, contraception, and other high-quality, affordable health care that is so desperately needed in the greater New Orleans area.
Louisiana needs more health care — not more of Jindal’s roadblocks and political theater. His health care record speaks for itself: slash budgets and services at the expense of those who need help the most. The public health system in his home state is already in shambles. Now with his call to defund Planned Parenthood, where will the women and men in Louisiana turn for these vital services?
Despite the governor’s relentless attacks, Planned Parenthood’s commitment to the community remains intact. Please join us Thursday at 4:30 p.m. at the Governor’s Mansion in Baton Rouge for a rally against defunding.
Planned Parenthood will fight to ensure we can continue to be here for the women, men and their families who rely on us for high-quality, compassionate care. We believe in health care. No matter what.
Melissa Flournoy, PhD, is state director of Planned Parenthood Louisiana.
May God in Heaven bless you Bobbie…keep looking towards the light, and let those who support the terrorism of abortion fall to the darkness they have chosen.
Jindal on Ebola outbreak, 2014: “[Obama’s officials] don’t seem to be responding competently. I’ve called it malpractice. I think that they need to be doing do a much better job
protecting us.”
2 deaths nationwide; Ebola vaccine developed.
=======
Louisiana brain-eating amoeba discovered in Louisiana, 2011.
3 deaths statewide, water health regulations, today, still failing the public.
^^^^^^^^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVSRm80WzZk
I see a bright future for Planned Parenthood – they shouldn’t be worried about being de-funded. Sales of baby body parts can probably cover the shortfall and . . . provide a cushion to buy the Lamborghini.
They could do even better if they just sold the entire fetus,
Better still – just sell the live baby — you can always harvest its parts at a later date. WHAT – you can’t sell a live baby??????? Who came up with this lousy theory???????
Dern – my cash crop destroyed by Political Correctness!!!!
PP is a demonic deception for deluded females. There are 1000’s of clinics to give real female heath care. PP lies as all progressive Dem lib outfits. Jindal will not be POTUS but he is a good solid moral guv.
“nickelndime” is concerned about the number of homeless females who are visibly pregnant (for many months) and then are NOT – these are NOT FULL-TERM pregnancies. The “homeless” do not have long life-spans – on the neutral ground or on street corners.
Now, do WE want to talk about CEO salaries next, because WE all should have known, that sooner or later, it all comes down to money.
08/18/2015 10:48 PM DST USA
Let’s enter into another area – pharmaceuticals. There is a huge market for what Planned Parenthood “allegedly” does. It’s like working the female client, but from another side. Ah, Vanity (!), may be the second worst, next to the original “SIN” – PRIDE. Here WE go again! Blame it on the first female, EVE.
08/18/2015 11:23 PM DST USA
Get yoselfs over to the State Capitol building steps in Baton Rouge. Yeah, make dat bus trip singing Kumbaya. Well, that’s about as effective as what Kenny Polite does on the steps of a Federale building in New Orleans.
08/18/2015 11:31 PM DST USA
Start reading the “inGREEDian lists” of the cheapest and the most expensive beauty products for humans. Thank Melissa Flournoy and Planned Parenthood for its not-for-profit FOR PROFIT contributions. PP is not the only non-profit that reaps billions of dollars off of the “human condition,” however. It couldn’t do what it does without legislators who are NOT about to de-fund it.
08/19/2015 2:20 AM DST USA
How did Melissa Flournoy regain her leadership role at Planned Parenthood after she was forced to resign due to this public relations fiasco with minority women last August?
[Melissa Flournoy, Louisiana Director of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, was the first person to speak. She proceeded to rudely derail the entire conversation.]
From the open letter to Melissa Flournoy: [You started by introducing yourself as the Louisiana State director of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast. After that, you proceeded to ask Deon what she could
Melissa. Amen.
Outside of a few parishes the state is designated as an area of physician shortage (APS). Bobby’s way of fixing this is shutting down public health unit clinics, reducing their hours and now, blocking care at Planned Parenthood.
Bobby is predictable, though: he gets a position usually awarded by a politician. Then he depreciates the skilled experts who want to prevent problems. He launches on a reduction of the program/agency, and sells off pieces of it to secure his next position. Then he imposes decisions that are based on ideology and grandstands with cherry-picked numbers and public relations. He leaves the program/agency in shambles as he flees to another position and repeats the cycle.
DHH is still reeling from his mismanagement as Assty Secretary and now due the poor choice of leadership to the agency as the appointing governor. Planned Parenthood gave good quality care to state residents and it must have been just too tempting to remove that access and get more media from it. He just couldn’t resist damaging something else.
The sooner he leaves Louisiana the better.
But please, dear god, ABV.
Planned Parenthood did not do abortions in Louisiana. And if you really did want to end abortions you would be helping get sex ed in schools, expanding access to birth control, supporting maternity leave, seeking support for child care and equity in women’s pay. Because just removing access to health care will not change the numbers of unwanted pregnancies. Unwanted pregnancies drive the number of abortions.
So, if you really do care, what are you doing?
My ASP is off the chair! To put it bluntly that Jindal “sells off pieces,” isn’t that exactly what got Planned Parenthood into the current fray of what it (the organization and its current leadership, including Melissa Flournoy), has been doing!?
Get on the damn bus. Sit on the steps.
08/20/2015 1:33 AM DST USA
In the words of Billy Joel, “…I heard about sex, but not enough.”
This is for “NOLALiz.”
08/20/2015 1:38 AM DST USA
Did you even read the article? What is good about elevated rates of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases?! Or maybe that’s what wrong with you; advanced syphilis does cause hallucinations and psychotic behavior.
Well, 55 people supporting Planned Parenthood Gulf States “made it” to the steps of the State Capitol on Thursday (August 20). When asked if the federal government would enforce the legality of continuing to fund Planned Parenthood, Raegan Carter, Planned Parenthood’s senior director for external services, had this to say:
“I think them making sure it was known it was illegal, that is the first step of them doing something to enforce it.”
THIS GIRL MUST HAVE BEEN IN THE HEAT TOO LONG ON THE STEPS OF THE STATE CAPITOL BUILDING.
The response is almost non-sensical.
08/21/2015 1:29 AM DST USA
This is out of context, but WE would say that “anything” ELEVATED in the Gulf States, including, but not limited to Louisiana, is a step in the right direction.
One step at a time, BaBee!
08/21/2015 2:15 AM DST USA
“Planned Parenthood”! Is that like an oxymoron? Who, exactly, came up with the name of this 501(c)(3) IRS tax-exempt non-profit? Just asking, but does this group fund vasectomies or is it focused on “crisis management” (females’ aborted pregnancies) among other things, such as DBW pharmaceuticals?
08/24/2015 2:37 AM DST USA