Posted on 03/04/2012 1:54:02 PM PST by Netizen
This is the html version of the file http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/statement-Congress-letterhead-2nd%20hearing.pdf.
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Leader Pelosi, Members of Congress, good morning, and thank you for calling this hearing on women’s health and allowing me to testify on behalf of the women who will benefit from the Affordable Care Act contraceptive coverage regulation. Myname is Sandra Fluke, and I’m a third year student at Georgetown Law, a Jesuit school. I’m also a past president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice or LSRJ. I’d like to acknowledge my fellow LSRJ members and allies and all of the student activists with us and thank them for being here today.
Georgetown LSRJ is here today because we’re so grateful that this regulation implements the nonpartisan, medical advice of the Institute of Medicine. I attend a Jesuit law school that does not provide contraception coverage in its student health plan. Just as we students have faced financial, emotional, and medical burdens as a result, employees at religiously affiliated hospitals and universities across the country have suffered similar burdens. We are all grateful for the new regulation that will meet the critical health care needs of so many women. Simultaneously, the recently announced adjustment addresses any potential conflict with the religious identity of Catholic and Jesuit institutions.
When I look around my campus, I see the faces of the women affected, and I have heard more and more of their stories. . On a daily basis, I hear from yet another woman from Georgetown or other schools or who works for a religiously affiliated employer who has suffered financial, emotional, and medical burdens because of this lack of contraceptive coverage. And so, I am here to share their voices and I thank you for allowing them to be heard.
Without insurance coverage, contraception can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary. Forty percent of female students at Georgetown Law report struggling financially as a result of this policy. One told us of how embarrassed and powerless she felt when she was standing at the pharmacy counter, learning for the first time that contraception wasn’t covered, and had to walk away because she couldn’t afford it. Women like her have no choice but to go without contraception. Just last week, a married female student told me she had to stop using contraception because she couldn’t afford it any
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longer. Women employed in low wage jobs without contraceptive coverage face the same choice.
You might respond that contraception is accessible in lots of other ways. Unfortunately, that’s not true. Women’s health clinics provide vital medical services, but as the Guttmacher Institute has documented, clinics are unable to meet the crushing demand for these services. Clinics are closing and women are being forced to go without. How can Congress consider the Fortenberry, Rubio, and Blunt legislation that would allow even more employers and institutions to refuse contraceptive coverage and then respond that the non-profit clinics should step up to take care of the resulting medical crisis, particularly when so many legislators are attempting to defund those very same clinics?
These denials of contraceptive coverage impact real people. In the worst cases, women who need this medication for other medical reasons suffer dire consequences. A friend of mine, for example, has polycystic ovarian syndrome and has to take prescription birth control to stop cysts from growing on her ovaries. Her prescription is technically covered by Georgetown insurance because it’s not intended to prevent pregnancy. Under many religious institutions’ insurance plans, it wouldn’t be, and under Senator Blunt’s amendment, Senator Rubio’s bill, or Representative Fortenberry’s bill, there’s no requirement that an exception be made for such medical needs. When they do exist, these exceptions don’t accomplish their well-intended goals because when you let university administrators or other employers, rather than women and their doctors, dictate whose medical needs are legitimate and whose aren’t, a woman’s health takes a back seat to a bureaucracy focused on policing her body.
In sixty-five percent of cases, our female students were interrogated by insurance representatives and university medical staff about why they needed these prescriptions and whether they were lying about their symptoms. For my friend, and 20% of women in her situation, she never got the insurance company to cover her prescription, despite verification of her illness from her doctor. Her claim was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted the birth control to prevent pregnancy. She’s gay, so clearly polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy. After months of paying over $100 out of pocket, she just couldn’t afford her medication anymore and had to stop taking it. I learned about all of this when I walked out of a test and got a message from her that in the middle of her final exam period she’d been in the emergency room all night in excruciating pain. She wrote, “It was so painful, I woke up thinking I’d been shot.” Without her taking the birth control, a massive cyst the size of a tennis ball had grown on her ovary. She had to have surgery to remove her entire ovary. On the morning I was originally scheduled to give this testimony, she sat in a doctor’s office. Since last year’s surgery, she’s been experiencing night sweats, weight gain, and other symptoms of early menopause as a result of the
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removal of her ovary. She’s 32 years old. As she put it: “If my body indeed does enter early menopause, no fertility specialist in the world will be able to help me have my own children. I will have no chance at giving my mother her desperately desired grandbabies, simply because the insurance policy that I paid for totally unsubsidized by my school wouldn’t cover my prescription for birth control when I needed it.” Now, in addition to potentially facing the health complications that come with having menopause at an early age-- increased risk of cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis, she may never be able to conceive a child.
Perhaps you think my friend’s tragic story is rare. It’s not. One woman told us doctors believe she has endometriosis, but it can’t be proven without surgery, so the insurance hasn’t been willing to cover her medication. Recently, another friend of mine told me that she also has polycystic ovarian syndrome. She’s struggling to pay for her medication and is terrified to not have access to it. Due to the barriers erected by Georgetown’s policy, she hasn’t been reimbursed for her medication since last August. I sincerely pray that we don’t have to wait until she loses an ovary or is diagnosed with cancer before her needs and the needs of all of these women are taken seriously.
This is the message that not requiring coverage of contraception sends. A woman’s reproductive healthcare isn’t a necessity, isn’t a priority. One student told us that she knew birth control wasn’t covered, and she assumed that’s how Georgetown’s insurance handled all of women’s sexual healthcare, so when she was raped, she didn’t go to the doctor even to be examined or tested for sexually transmitted infections because she thought insurance wasn’t going to cover something like that, something that was related to a woman’s reproductive health. As one student put it, “this policy communicates to female students that our school doesn’t understand our needs.” These are not feelings that male fellow studentsexperience. And they’re not burdens that male students must shoulder.
In the media lately, conservative Catholic organizations have been asking: what did we expect when we enrolled at a Catholic school? We can only answer that we expected women to be treated equally, to not have our school create untenable burdens that impede our academic success. We expected that our schools would live up to the Jesuit creed of cura personalis, to care for the whole person, by meeting all of our medical needs. We expected that when we told our universities of the problems this policy created for students, they would help us. We expected that when 94% of students opposed the policy, the university would respect our choices regarding insurance students pay for completely unsubsidized by the university. We did not expect that women would be told in the national media that if we wanted comprehensive insurance that met our needs, not just those of men, we should have gone to school elsewhere, even if that meant a less prestigious university. We refuse to pick between a quality education and our health, and we
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resent that, in the 21st century, anyone thinks it’s acceptable to ask us to make this choice simply because we are women. Many of the women whose stories I’ve shared are Catholic women, so ours is not a war against the church. It is a struggle for access to the healthcare we need. The President of the Association of Jesuit Colleges has shared that Jesuit colleges and universities appreciate the modification to the rule announced last week. Religious concerns are addressed and women get the healthcare they need. That is something we can all agree on. Thank you.
“when she was raped, she didn’t go to the doctor even to be examined or tested for sexually transmitted infections because she thought insurance wasn’t going to cover something like that,”
Sounds like BS.
Fluke woke up one day to realize that Free Love ain’t free!
Perhaps you think my friend’s tragic story is rare. It’s not. One woman told us doctors believe she has endometriosis, but it can’t be proven without surgery, so the insurance hasn’t been willing to cover her medication. Recently, another friend of mine told me that she also has polycystic ovarian syndrome. She’s struggling to pay for her medication and is terrified to not have access to it. Due to the barriers erected by Georgetown’s policy, she hasn’t been reimbursed for her medication since last August. I sincerely pray that we don’t have to wait until she loses an ovary or is diagnosed with cancer before her needs and the needs of all of these women are taken seriously.
If she thinks life is bad when you elect to attend a religious school and challenge the belief system, just wait until the Gub'mint is the ONLY provider of health care (as Hillarycare advocated, you will NOT be able to pay cash, that would create a two-tiered system).
We are already seeing the penny pinchers tell us to STOP all of this cancer screening, "you just gonna die anyhow!"
Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Georgetown has Mandatory Health Insurance (sounds like ObamaCare)
http://studentaffairs.georgetown.edu/insurance/letteraccept.html
Fall 2011-2012 Plan Year:
Term of Coverage: 8/15/2011 - 8/14/2012
Open Enrollment: 2nd week in July - September 15, 2011
$1,895 per student
$5,516 per student and spouse
$5,516 per student and child(ren)
$8,680 per student and family
___________________________
Students can waive out of this plan only with proof and submission of having comparable insurance levels -$100,000K per illness and $100,000K per injury
(this is what goes on in MA under RomneyCare, if you do not opt for your employers insurance they need a note that states you have insurance elsewhere)
The thing with college - now most students - up to 26yrs old - can still be under their parents policies - I’ve read where upwards of 2/3rds of students in the US are covered under their parents policies..
Fluke’s testimony was carefully crafted - notice she relays stories of “students” in their 30’s - to not have an argument that most are covered under parents. It also is deceptive because the college does offer to opt-out of their plan and students can buy other plans - I looked at over 20 plans for DC for a 30 year old female student - all of them under the $157/mo of the Georgetown plan cost - all of them presumable covering BCP’s and most likely hitting that 100K coverage standard.
There were so many ways to rip Fluke’s testimony apart - but by calling her a slut - when she never talked about herself in the testimony - killed a great opportunity to rip this whole thing apart.
Ugh
“when she was raped, she didn’t go to the doctor even to be examined or tested for sexually transmitted infections because she thought insurance wasn’t going to cover something like that,”
Sounds like BS.
Exactly my point! The woman didn’t even bother to see if it was covered. The testimony is full of deceit and subterfuge.
Law school probably 4 years with another 3 or so of graduate school. If you read the testimony you would know she wasn’t talking about herself but several other women including a lesbian. I think she is including the annual office visits and pelvic exams as well.
Lesbian Catholic womyn who considered birth control to be a sacrament.
Ms. Fluke-U did NOT testify before a congressional committee.
REPEAT.....Ms. Fluke-U did NOT testify before a congressional committee.
Cong. Issa refused her request to testify on the grounds she was NOT QUALIFIED to discuss the issue before the committee.
THE "HEARING" and her "TESTIMONY" was and is an elaborate hoax. It was leftist street theater....set up in some other location and mimicing a real hearing. It was perpetrated by Democrat activists and "actors" who were aided and abetted by Nancy Pelousy. Ms. Fluke-U was the star.
IT WAS A MOCK CONGRESSIONAL HEARING!
Folks are falling for this left and right.
To paraphrase a well-known verse......"Be not deceived, God and the American public will not be mocked; for whatever the deceitful Left sows, that it will also reap."
Leni
fluke[3] n
1. (Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Animals) any parasitic flatworm, such as the blood fluke and liver fluke, of the classes Monogenea and Digenea (formerly united in a single class Trematoda)
2. (Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Zoology) another name for flounder2 [1]
[Old English flōc; related to Old Norse flōki flounder, Old Saxon flaka sole, Old High German flah smooth]
(this is what goes on in MA under RomneyCare, if you do not opt for your employers insurance they need a note that states you have insurance elsewhere)e when filing our
In MA we have to have proof of healthcare when filing our taxes.
Oh I know, its just going to go downhill!
If she didn’t go to the doctor (or police) to be examined after being raped, she let a violent criminal walk. Much like Planned Parenthood does when they abort young teenage victims’ babies.
You know....
Georgetown is Pro-Choice!
They give students an option to waive out of their medical coverage and buy a comparable insurance elsewhere.
Medical Coverage IS Mandatory (hello ObamaCare)
Buying Insurance coverage from them Isn’t
They insist on ‘Premium” Insurance coverage for their students - the students can decide where to buy it from
Pro-Choice!
Oh yeah and just to add to my rant above: What guy is she screwing 2.05 times a day that is going to use a raincoat each and every time? No no no no, that’s not how it works. If some guy is screwing a girl that much eventually he is going to insist on doing it raw otherwise he will go out of his mind. At least that is my experience. Unless she is doing it with a bunch of guys? Which again would lead to it being very proper to call her a slut.
Was Fluke sworn in when she spoke before Congress?
All your points are valid. I don’t listen to Rush so I don’t know what all he said. But, he botched this one.
i don’t know if he was given the full transcript or just a quick synopsis.
Someone with the know how needs to rip it apart. Hannity?? Get a doctor on his show to explain all the bs this woman is trying to foist on the masses.
We know the $3000 cost is phoney.
We know that no one at Georgetown is struggling.
Who is supporting Ms. Fluke.
Was that really her borned name??
Why doesn’t she put on her big girl pants and have a heartfelt conversation with her “boyfriend” asking him to pay his “fair share”?
That is, if they are in a committed relationship and she is speaking honestly about this being an issue for her.
It’s an emotional appeal, alright, but she is an ATTENTION WHORE who is an advocate for a “reproductive justice” group.
It’s not about the sex, it’s about the publicity.
This has morphed into a distraction at a critical time. The idea that Obama called her is sooooo repulsive. He’s one sicko.
I know she did appear before a congressional hearing. I never said she did. Her testimony was videotaped. We all know it was a sham.
It doesn’t change the fact that she has had her words out there and that Rush by calling her a slut has brought even more attention to her. Thus, making it doubly important for people to know exactly what she is trying to do.
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