Bureaucrats getting between me and my doctor? And how is this worse than Republicans doing it?
Strange that Republicans congresspersons should be using that as their mantra since they’ve been getting between Women and their doctors for years. Republicans have been ingenious in coming up with new laws which restrict a woman’s right to choose, they are inserting themselves between the patient and physician.
I should tell you that I’ve been a patient in government controlled health care systems for most of my adult life. First as a member of the military, second with the Veterans Administration and now the VA, Tricare and Medicare. I’ve never had a physician need to consult any bureaucrat for my care. I’ve been perfectly satisfied with my care.
However I have seen how Republicans have inserted themselves in women’s care. While stationed in Germany the effects of the Republican edict that military hospitals not provide abortions are very obvious. Pregnant females must travel to the Netherlands to receive an abortion, and then travel back to Germany during their postoperative period. On one occasion a young woman returned from the Netherlands and presented at our emergency room with abdominal pain. The physician was perplexed by her symptoms. I told him that she "reminded me of a patient I’d once seen in the days before Roe v. Wade". The physicians also couldn’t make a diagnosis. When they took her to surgery they found multiple perforations of her uterus and parts of the fetus in her abdomen. She died several days later.
He dismissed my idea "this couldn’t happen there." Did we know for sure she’d gone to a hospital in the Netherlands? Anyway when they opened her abdomen and found perforations of the uterus and pieces of the fetus in her abdomen. She survived. During my career one of my favorite things was besting docs in diagnoses. This time though I felt no satisfaction when the surgeon told me what they found.
The Republicans came up with this phony diagnosis "partial birth abortion." In case you didn’t know this it is a made up term dreamed up to make people think this was some ghastly procedure which was tantamount to torture. They paid no attention to the reasons women have "intact dilation." They seem to feel it is preferable to have the mother’s die than to save the fetus. O’Reilly’s ridiculous and oft repeated statement that women could have a late term abortion for a "pain in her leg" bears no reality. But it did increase Republican sentiment against this most needed procedure.
Isn’t it a bigger crime that women with out of control diabetes, toxemia and or hypertension should be forced to maintain a pregnancy that could end her life? Most people don’t have any clue as to the horrendous fetal anomalies there are that cause vaginal delivery to be either fatal to the mother or the fetus.
The idea that women should have to see and ultrasound, listen to the fetus’s heart tones or have to put up with a bunch of zealots barricading the clinics is equally a barrier to the woman and her physician.
There are people out there who are trying to make birth control pills and devices illegal.
There are huge problems with access to the "morning after" pill. Once again the Republicans have been the driving force.
So the next time you hear a Republican talk about getting a bureaucrat between you and your physician...remind them that they are doing that already. Single payer insurance is the only solution to the mess that health care is today.