As someone said on Twitter, breast cancer more or less removes incentives for abortions. Especially undetected breast cancer that goes unscreened because a woman doesn't have affordable access (yet) to health care. This must be why the Susan G. Komen Foundation yanked the funding rug right out from under Planned Parenthood.

Via Planned Parenthood's shocking press release:

Planned Parenthood Federation of America today expressed deep disappointment in response to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation’s decision to stop funding breast cancer prevention, screenings and education at Planned Parenthood health centers. Anti-choice groups in America have repeatedly threatened the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation for partnering with Planned Parenthood to provide these lifesaving cancer screenings and news articles suggest that the Komen Foundation ultimately succumbed to these pressures.

“We are alarmed and saddened that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation appears to have succumbed to political pressure. Our greatest desire is for Komen to reconsider this policy and recommit to the partnership on which so many women count,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

In the last few weeks, the Komen Foundation has begun notifying local Planned Parenthood programs that their breast cancer initiatives will not be eligible for new grants (beyond existing agreements or plans). The Komen Foundation’s leadership did not respond to Planned Parenthood requests to meet with the Komen Board of Directors about the decision.

Gosh. Right-wing pressure, you say? Here's a look at some of the key players in a decision like this. There is Julie Teer, VP Development, who also was a key Romney fundraiser in 2008. There is Komen's new senior Vice President of Public Policy, Karen Handel, who has stated publicly that she does not support Planned Parenthood and vowed to de-fund screenngs back in 2010.

First, let me be clear, since I am pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood. During my time as Chairman of Fulton County, there were federal and state pass-through grants that were awarded to Planned Parenthood for breast and cervical cancer screening, as well as a “Healthy Babies Initiative.” The grant was authorized, regulated, administered and distributed through the State of Georgia. Because of the criteria, regulations and parameters of the grant, Planned Parenthood was the only eligible vendor approved to meet the state criteria. Additionally, none of the services in any way involved abortions or abortion-related services. In fact, state and federal law prohibits the use of taxpayer funds for abortions or abortion related services and I strongly support those laws.

Because breast cancer screenings are just like abortions, don't you know?

Continue reading »

Again, proving that the best Sunday morning news-of-the-day conversation is to be found on Up with Chris Hayes, Hayes had on four women to discuss the Komen/Planned Parenthood backlash. Imagine that! Women like Amy Goodman, Anne Marie Slaughter, Melissa Harris-Perry and Michelle Goldberg to discuss the greater political ramifications of the reproductive health argument, instead of conservative white men. Will wonders never cease?

What appeared to catch the Komen Foundation and other conservative backers off guard was the immediate and grassroots rejection of this continued politicization of women's health issues by the conservative agenda. In an earlier segment of the show, Goldberg surmised that this is has as much to do with the insularity of conservative thinking (as evidence by Komen's continued help from Ari Fleischer) as well as the class issues, as Harris-Perry suggests in this clip. When an estimated one in five Americans have sought treatment for a wide array of health issues from Planned Parenthood (and that includes men) over their lifetime, it is truly a bridge too far for conservatives to threaten the very existence of this organization.

When one in eight women will receive a diagnosis of breast cancer, but studies show that women of lower socio-economic levels and minorities have significantly less positive outcomes, it makes the services that Planned Parenthood all that more critical and the reason so many every day citizens rose up to push back against Komen.

Republican, Democrat or Independent, the truth of the matter is that we are *not* a center-right country, and when conservatives choose to push that agenda, it all of us that remind them that we will continue to fight for the rights of those who don't get a voice in the discussion.

Also worth reading: Barbara Ehrenreich--Welcome to Cancerland

(h/t ABL WARNING: Graphic images and language)

My mother died of breast cancer. I'm sure the vast majority of people reading this can point to an aunt, a cousin, a sister, a best friend who has had the disease. So far, the estimated new cases and deaths from breast cancer in the United States in 2012 (and this is just February) is 226,870 women and 2,190 men with new cases of cancer and 39,510 women and 410 men who have died from the disease. Many of these women, and possibly even men, are poor and have little access to proper health care or support in a country where health care is still only for few who can afford it, and many of them owe their lives to finding the disease early through breast screening provided by Planned Parenthood.

But it seems the anti-abortion faction of the right wing isn't just trying to impose their moral, political and religious values on women's wombs, they don't give a damn about the health of women's breasts, either. The Susan G. Komen Foundation has found itself under fire during this past week over its decision to withdraw funding from Planned Parenthood, thereby depriving thousands of women from life-saving breast screening. But one voice in the many opposed to the gutless capitulation of the Komen Foundation, and specifically Komen's CEO, Nancy Brinker, is that of Linda Burger, a 56-year-old breast cancer survivor in Las Vegas, who was so appalled she made a video. It is not for the faint hearted, for as Linda says in this video, cancer makes you frank, it makes you say what you feel. It give you the courage to face a camera and bare the scars from a mastectomy for the entire world to see. This brave, beautiful, kick-ass woman pulls no punches, she's a hero through and through.

Watch this wonderful video. Then send it to an aunt, a cousin, a sister, a best friend. Send it to your Congressman. Send the Komen Foundation the message that politics and religion have no place in providing health care for women who have nowhere else to turn. They can take their plastic pink ribbons and shove them up Ari Fleischer's nose. Then send a donation to Planned Parenthood - help keep them alive, so that they can help keep us alive.

The Susan G. Komen Foundation has absolutely no credibility left. On Thursday, this is what Nancy Brinker, Komen's CEO, told Andrea Mitchell.

BRINKER: In 2010, we set about creating excellence in our grants, not just in our community grants, but in our science grants, putting metrics, outcomes and measures to them. [...] Part of that includes taking these grants into communities and being excellent grant givers. Many of the grants we were doing with Planned Parenthood do not meet new standards of criteria for how we can measure our results and effectiveness in communities.

She went on to emphasize that this was the key reason the funding had been withdrawn -- and played down the fact that the GOP House was currently investigating Planned Parenthood.

But here's part of the statement she released Friday.

Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.

Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer. Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process. We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.

So, what happened to those "measures" and "metrics" and "outcomes" Brinker was babbling about on Thursday?

Meanwhile, wingnuts are circulating this piece, which claims a Komen board member says they've haven't reversed themselves at all.

Following a new statement Komen for the Cure released making many observers believe the breast cancer charity reversed position on whether it would fund grants to Planned Parenthood, one Komen board member says it hasn’t caved.

Komen board member John Raffaelli talked with the Washington Post after the statement was released and said the new announcement doesn’t necessarily mean there is any reversal until and unless Planned Parenthood receives additional funding beyond what was already planned before Komen’s December decision.

Based on Komen's actions this week, does anyone have any confidence that they'll do the right thing now?

For Komen to regain any credibility at all, Brinker's got to go. And so does the other wingnut behind this.

Yes, we're in full damage control mode now. Nancy Brinker made a very long appearance on Andrea Mitchell's show this morning to insist that this wasn't about defunding Planned Parenthood, but really it is about "grant excellence."

The clip above is toward the end of the interview and includes reaction from Senators Patty Murray and Barbara Boxer. What's remarkable about Brinker's appearance is her pivot away from the "under investigation" reason for terminating the grants to one of "grant excellence." What, I wonder, does "grant excellence" mean? To me, it means they want a less incendiary excuse for a bad decision. She goes on about metrics but has no answer to questions about what metrics they evaluated and how Planned Parenthood failed to meet whatever expectations they had for the grant.

Brinker and the SGKF have another problem, too, which I'm sure relates to Brinker's pivot to a new reason for the Planned Parenthood decision. It seems that Penn State is the subject of an ongoing investigation too.

MoJo reports:

Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which recently announced that it is ending grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening because of a controversial investigation launched by an anti-abortion Republican congressman, currently funds cancer research at the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center to the tune of $7.5 million. Like Planned Parenthood, Penn State is currently the subject of a federal government investigation, and like the Planned Parenthood grant, the Penn State grant appears to violate a new internal rule at Komen that bans grants to organizations that are under investigation by federal, state, or local governments. But so far, only the Planned Parenthood grants appear to have been cancelled.

An internal Komen memo written by President Elizabeth Thompson and obtained by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic states that if "an applicant or its affiliates" is under investigation "for financial or administrative improprieties by local, state or federal authorities," then "the applicant will be ineligible to receive a grant." Penn State, the Pennsylvania university that the Hershey center is affiliated with, is currently under investigation by the federal government over the sexual assault scandal involving former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, who has been indicted on multiple counts of sexual abuse of children. In 2008, the Komen foundation awarded a five-year, $7.5 million grant to the Hershey center to study treatments that could reduce the risk of breast cancer.

Continue reading »

This is a trailer for a documentary coming out Friday about the "pinkification" of breast cancer. Could it be any more timely, considering the exposure of the Susan G Komen Foundation as a right-wing tool? So much information has emerged, so little time. With many thanks to those who contributed links to my original post on this topic, I'd like to suggest that we support this film, and all efforts to marginalize the SGKF's hijacking of women's health for right-wing causes.

Things to Read

Via BigDaddyMalcontent, MoJo reports on founder Nancy Brinker's ties to the Republican party. BigDaddy also dropped this link to Barbara Ehrenreich's article for Harper's tracing the incestuous relationship between SGKF and AstraZeneca, the pharmaceutical company. Kate points us to the long list of 1 percenter corporate sponsors of the SGKF. Howard Dean puts everything in perspective.

Things to Do

• Sign the Credo Action petition to tell the SGKF not to throw women under the bus.
• Join the Facebook Group to De-Fund SGKF
• Donate to Planned Parenthood

From AMericablog via Newsmax

Rehnquist's Clever Boost for Bush

When Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist announced in late October that he had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, we took the news sadly.

Now that the election has taken place and the dust has settled, we think the clever veteran of the Court and Beltway politics may have timed his announcement to give George Bush a small boost before Election Day.

Rehnquist could have waited a few days, until after the election was over -- as John Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, did to announce her breast cancer.

As NewsMax reader Miguel Tuas first pointed out to us, Rehnquist's timing was impeccable.

Though Rehnquist did not say he planned to step down, many media commentators said the ailing chief justice, now 80 years old, may have to leave the court to attend to his health.

And that suddenly injected the judiciary -- and the number of Supreme Court appointments the next president may have to make -- into the presidential campaign.

Can you imagine Kerry's potential court picks: Dershowitz? Tribe? Estrich?

Thankfully, we don't have to.

After last week's very, very bad week for Wellpoint, it seems they've turned a corner with regard to rescissions. Maybe. Their carefully-phrased press release quietly posted yesterday has some hopeful signs.

WellPoint, Inc. (NYSE: WLP), the nation's largest health insurer, announced today that it will implement federal legislation regarding individual market rescissions effective May 1. This is well ahead of the effective date contained in the legislation. WellPoint is the first insurer to implement the provision. This move builds on WellPoint's leadership in the early implementation of reform by extending coverage to dependents up to age 26.

Rescissions, while rarely used, are one process insurers employ to reduce fraud and protect members. The standard contained in the federal legislation requires insurers not to rescind policies except in cases of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of material fact.

Their decision is still limited to individual policies, which is progress, but not complete progress. Rescissions happen in the group market, too. I hope they plan to extend this May 1st effective date to all of their insureds, also well within the effective date contained in the legislation. While they're at it, they could end pre-existing conditions exclusions early, too. That would make them true leaders.

And, just as I was writing this, I received information that United Health has decided to follow Wellpoint's lead.

Still, we're going to have to watch them. This snippet gave me a bit of a start:

Democrats, in letters to seven insurers on Tuesday, said the companies should implement the rescission ban immediately and institute independent, third-party reviews of any decisions to drop coverage.

UnitedHealth "is aggressively seeking outside vendors and will be instituting independent, external third party review in the near term," the company said.

An independent, third-party reviewer who receives payment from a company to conduct a review may not be so independent. I'd feel much more comfortable if these reviews were done by government reviewers. This is, by the way, why it's so critical that financial reform have that consumer agency. People need a pathway that doesn't involve appealing to agencies on corporate payrolls, in my opinion.

Time for Kathleen Sibelius to step in again. This time Wellpoint leads the way by targeting key groups of insureds for fraud investigations. Their first experiment appears to be women diagnosed with breast cancer.

Via Reuters:

The women all paid their premiums on time. Before they fell ill, none had any problems with their insurance. Initially, they believed their policies had been canceled by mistake.

They had no idea that WellPoint was using a computer algorithm that automatically targeted them and every other policyholder recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The software triggered an immediate fraud investigation, as the company searched for some pretext to drop their policies, according to government regulators and investigators.

Once the women were singled out, they say, the insurer then canceled their policies based on either erroneous or flimsy information. WellPoint declined to comment on the women's specific cases without a signed waiver from them, citing privacy laws.

h/t Wonk Room

This type of behavior has been smacked down before and now has the force of the new health care reform law to do it again. You'd think insurers would get the message, right?

Not so much. This morning I received a report of an employer conducting a "dependent eligibility audit." This isn't the first time I've heard of these, but this one is particularly ugly. For obvious reasons, I've removed names and the identity of their employer.

...I am pretty sure my family is currently being targeted by [my spouse's employer] and Aetna because of my child's recent [redacted for privacy] diagnosis. Just a month after his Dx we received a notice in the mail letting us know that we were being "audited" by the health insurance co to make sure that [my child and I] were actually legally related to [my spouse] and eligible for health benefits. We were asked to fax in copies of our marriage certificate and IDs and our child's birth certificate...We did. HR confirmed it.

...Today I got a call saying that we still haven't sent in the requested paperwork and are in immediate danger of being dropped from the health plan. And they claim to have no record of the paperwork we sent in.

This press release from HRAdvance is pretty clear about why these "dependent eligibility audits" are taking place:

[Section 2712] of the PPACA prohibits the rescinding of health insurance for any reason other than ‘fraud' and ‘intentional misrepresentation of material'. Proving that an employee has committed fraud can be extremely difficult, and will only become more challenging in the future. "A dependent eligibility audit provider who can assist in those efforts will be key to success," states Brennan Clipp, Senior Vice President of Sales at HRAdvance.

Simply stated, these audits are intended to build a database of people they can target for fraud or misrepresentation if they should be diagnosed with anything from acne to hives to breast cancer later on. This person's report of the supposed non-receipt of sensitive documents bothers me, too. It makes me wonder why documents faxed from the same machine wouldn't always reach their intended recipient, particularly in light of the specific circumstances.

The good news? They're pushing the limits and the edges early, giving Sec. Sibelius a great foundation to slap them back like she did when they started rumbling about not covering children with pre-existing conditions.

The bad news? We're all going to have to watch out for each other every step of the way, because they're doing this to people through their employers, causing them to fear for their jobs if they get caught in one of the insurance company's "algorithms".

h/t David

From This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn and Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz get into one of those discussions over this week's breast screening recommendations in which the Republican simply constructs an alternate reality:

BLACKBURN: ... Debbie is right when she says they forgot about people. Indeed, they did. But we have to realize, this group that made this recommendation, this isn't some outside group. This is a part of HHS. And when you look at the...

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: It's an independent group. That is not accurate.

BLACKBURN: ... 118 -- when you look at the...

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: It is not a part of HHS.

BLACKBURN: No, it is a part of HHS.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: No, it is not.

BLACKBURN: And when you look at what is going to happen with these 118 new bureaucracies with 62 directives that are given by the health choices commissioner on what insurance can be offered in this country after 2013 and what is going to be paid, you know that this is the bureaucrat in the exam room. This is how it's going to happen.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Marsha...

BLACKBURN: And this is the first step.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Marsha, there's an insurance company bureaucrat in the -- in between the patient and her doctor right now.

BLACKBURN: This is breast cancer. Well, and people don't like that, and we need to get rid of...

(CROSSTALK)

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: And your bill -- your -- your alternative...

(CROSSTALK)

BLACKBURN: We need to get rid of all of those insurance bureaucrats.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: ... does nothing to...

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: I'm going to have to -- I'm going to have to stop this right now.

Yes, George. Because your job is to provide a showcase. You're not supposed to confront the guests when they make things up.