The Obama administration’s health care spending provisions in the proposed economic stimulus bill included money for family planning services. As the headline states, that funding may be dropped for political appeasement.
Why? Opponents consider family planning as a contraceptives dispensing service or other form of societal threat. In reality, the services extend to women’s health screenings and prenatal care.
Will spending on family services stimulate the economy or create jobs immediately? Of course not. Neither will all the Medicaid and other health spending included in the stimulus package. But in a time when people will be struggling for any health care at all, it can prevent a further drain on the economy.
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Georgia figures prominently in this NY Times article on job losses creating an overwhelming burden on government-funded healthcare.
A Gwinnett County women is foregoing medical treatment since losing her job and benefits, although her daughter is covered under PeachCare. DCH commissioner Dr. Rhonda Medows is quoted at the end of the article about how this economy prevents any estimate of how wide the coverage gap might be.
Demand for services predictably rise and fall with the economy and employment numbers. Why can’t there be a funding structure in place to ensure reserves are built during flush economic times to cover shortfalls during a downturn?
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Among a number of policies that the Obama administration plans to rescind is the requirement for states wanting to boost health coverage for children in families with higher incomes to prove that 95 percent of children in households with incomes under 200 percent of poverty are covered first.
This requirement is virtually impossible to document.
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A group of researchers will begin tracking the health of individual children from birth to 21 in select parts of the country to understand causes and influences of disease.
The Five Healthy Steps program espoused by Voices for Georgia’s Children isn’t that far-reaching, although collecting data during exams of all children in the state in five key health indicators can help Georgia identify trends that could lead to better policies for preventive care.
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The Georgia Children’s Advocacy Network (GA-CAN!) met on Friday, Jan. 9 for its annual pre-Legislative Session meeting to help get advocates’ minds around the next session of the Georgia General Assembly and identify priorities for children and families. The session, incidentally, starts today.
The AJC’s Maureen Downey offered her observations on Georgia’s political climate and the uphill climb for child advocates wanting to make inroads with the state’s political leaders. You can watch the video of her remarks here.
A striking note in Maureen’s talk was when she pointed out the absence of male legislators trying to move Georgia forward by improve outcomes for children. Female legislators typically haul that freight, which is a difficult battle under any circumstances given their minority status and the “traditional values” orientation of their male counterparts. Initiatives for meaningful policy change are usually left to the same, small group of women in the House and Senate.
Just where are the men in the Georgia General Assembly?
We know they’re there. We know many of them can draw the correlation to children and the state’s social and economic health. So why won’t they help lead the charge?
And for that matter, where are the men in the ranks of the advocates? They are grossly underrepresented in this constiuency as well.
Guys, it’s time to step up.
A new CDC report shows that teen pregnancies are on an upswing, a statistical trend that started last year after a long decline. The state by state report has Mississippi leading other states in this unfortunate category by a wide margin, with over 64 out of 1000 births attributed to teens. Georgia is at about 54 per 1000.
Is abstinence-only education the culprit? Celebrity parents? Or is there something much more fundamental happening?
It’s a fact that teens – particularly unmarried teens – having children virtually guarantee a future of poverty for themselves and their children. And their children have a higher probability of landing in prison.
At what age should this issue be addressed with children? What role can parents, schools and churches have in educating them about the freedoms lost and potential disease at an early age so they’d know what they’d be missing in life?
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I wonder if the AJC editorial page editor deliberately penned the lead for this opinion in today’s paper.
In any case, we have strong opinions on improving education in Georgia. Should corporal punishment have a role in this day and age?
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