Advancing Health Care Reform

Making Women's Health Care A Priority

Planned Parenthood believes that all Americans should be guaranteed access to quality, affordable health care. 

Contact us at fappa@fappa.org to get involved and to become a member of a Rapid Response Team in your area!

There is no doubt that the United States is facing a health care crisis of historic proportions. Nearly 46 million Americans and 4 million Floridians are uninsured and an additional 25 million Americans have insurance but lack sufficient access to services. The demand for health care is urgent and the value of prevention, a cornerstone of Planned Parenthood services, is self-evident. Ensuring access to health care is a long process, and Planned Parenthood will not rest until we come to a solution.

Focus on Prevention

An integral part of America's health care safety net, Planned Parenthood has called for a renewed focus on preventive health. Many women, including many Planned Parenthood clients, rely on their reproductive health care provider as their primary source of health care. Through this relationship, women have access to a broad range of reproductive health care services that promote and protect their general health and well-being.

Planned Parenthood is a safety net health care provider and entry point into the health care system. In Florida, over 108,000 men, women and teens rely on our health centers for basic health care each year. Today more than 7 in 10 patients who access care through a women’s health center consider it their primary source of health care.  The vast majority of care offered by women’s health centers is preventative, including 98 percent of services provided at Planned Parenthood health centers in Florida.

For more than 90 years, Planned Parenthood has been a health care provider helping women and their families “plan” for happy, healthy and productive futures.  Together, we can make women’s health – and the health of their families – a priority.

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Women's Health Matters

A new Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Report spotlights the impact that the nation’s health care crisis is having on women.

According to the report:

* Women are more vulnerable to high health care costs because women’s reproductive health requires more regular contact with health care providers, including yearly Pap tests, mammograms, and obstetric care.  These tough economic times are especially difficult for women struggling to pay for basic health care.

* The Women's Research and Education Institute reports that women of childbearing age spend 68 percent more in out-of-pocket health care costs than men, in part because of reproductive health-related supplies and services.

*  A Kaiser Family Foundation report shows that roughly 16.7 million women are uninsured, and thus likely to postpone care and delay or forgo important preventive care such as cancer screenings.

* Family planning centers, like Planned Parenthood, serve as an entry point for millions of women. Guttmacher reports that six in 10 clients consider family planning centers their main source of health care. Oftentimes, it is their first interaction with the country’s health care system.