Posted on 09/19/2011 8:54:44 AM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
As the debate over Texas Gov. Rick Perry mandating the HPV vaccine continues between Republican presidential candidates, a woman whose endorsement is coveted by all them, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, has her own complicated history on the issue.
In 2007, shortly before Perry issued an executive order requiring that schoolgirls be vaccinated against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, or HPV, that causes most cervical cancers, Haley was throwing her support behind a similar bill in South Carolina. At the time she was in her second term as a state representative.
State Rep. Joan Brady introduced the Cervical Cancer Prevention Act in South Carolina, and the Republican corralled more than 60 legislators, including Haley, to sponsor the bill. Unlike the executive order for which Perry is taking heat, this legislative mandate did not include a provision for parents to opt out of inoculating their daughters.
Within months, fierce opposition mounted, and legislative records back up accounts from sources who recall sponsors "dropping like flies" before a unanimous vote killed the bill on April 18, 2007.
(Excerpt) Read more at articles.cnn.com ...
I think this accurate. 100% of the cervical cancers show evidence of an HPV infection. Gardasil targets four strains of HPV, two of which are present in 70% of the cancer cases; the other two not having any known relationship to cancer. But, and this is an important factor, millions of people are infected with HPV at any given time, and most of them cure. Similar to influenza, lots of people "get it," and some people die of complications from having it. The risk of serious complications from influenza infection is greater than from HPV infection.
The first thing in your comment I saw was the phrase “genital warts,” and I thought you were talking about John Kerry.
With an opt-out which anybody but the least-involved parents could easily have submitted, maintaing control of their own children's lives and welfare. Hey, I home schooled so I would not give up my parental rights at ALL. I don't think asking parents to care about their kids enough to take their OWN parental control with such an easy way is asking too much of good parents.
Although, come to think of it, there really ARE too many parents who don't even care enough to take charge of their children's best interest, so maybe Rick Perry was actually expecting too much of those parents.
That said, usually conservatives applaud states trying to use conservative - local - private funding ways to implement programs, but in this case, all the other governors using tax payer money to pay for their Gardasil programs (happening NATION-WIDE) at that time seems to be the route of choice for today's conservatives here. Go figure.
Now we ALL are stuck with paying Mereck through tax payer funding.
Marty, really. Even Perry supporters should be able to tell the difference between donations from ‘the pharmaceutical industry’ and donations from a single company to a politician who happened to mandate one of that company’s products on the very day they gave him a check for $5k.
If you want to accuse Bachmann of impropriety, have at it. However, there is a clear case of at least the appearance of impropriety in Perry’s case. If it’s there with Bachmann, I haven’t seen it yet. If it’s there, Perry should attack her with it.
Not meant to challenge the label "easy", or to assert that the process is "hard," but it's good to know what the process is.
There’s a plot behind this all.
I’m sure of it.
http://truthaboutgardasil.org/
Here is one. I will send you a few later on. Have to go out awhile.
This is a very dangerous vaccine. Several countries in Europe have banned it. Truth is, nobody knows the long term effects and it is, at this time, only good for 4-6 years.
You know what people say about it is true because all the bad symptoms seem to be the same.
I would never force this on my kids.
All you have to do is google it.
No plot, as far as I can see. Just an attempt by several media sources to confuse the issue and turn that twisted form of the issue into a club to beat good conservatives with.
As far as I’m concerned, there are only two people involved in this issue that matter: Bachmann, for her statements on Gardasil itself and how it might feed anti-vaccine hysteria, and Perry, whose use of the EO process to mandate the treatment was far enough outside of normal “channels” that it warrants a closer look.
Here is another.
Pay no attention to the site name. It is a fair assessment.
I spent several hours reading up on different sites. There are so many.
Make sure you click on the pink link where it says 10 things you need to know. It is an update.
So you are in favor of forced vaccination of HPV.
I’ll check them out, LOL about the site name.
Yes, a plot. A plot! A plot, I tell you!
I have spent a lot of time over the past few days reading up about Gardasil.
It is a vaccine most vile. Anyone who would try to force this dangerous vaccine on people needs a few doses of it themself first.
Your ignorance is astounding, and you should be embarrassed for yourself.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, and they are very reasonable points.
I actually don’t think Perry’s route to funding the program in Texas would have worked out well. It would have depended on parents caring enough to submit their opt-out... too many parents either don’t care or just aren’t involved enough in their children’s lives.
The route Rick Perry took also did not have a good “PR” appearance to it at all. While he was trying to figure out a way to fund that program locally with private funds instead of using federal, tax-payer funds as all the other states were at that time, if he was against the state legislature at that time who apparently wanted to just use tax payer money to pay for the vaccines instead, he should have kept his actions beyond reproach. While in effect, he was not giving any more money to Mereck to pay for the vaccines than any other state or any other governor to pay for their vaccines in all the other states, nor would he have been giving Merck any more money through private funding as opposed to public funding, his little self-push against the legislature did and still does not come off well.
Still, to pound on Perry for payments for the vaccines from private funds - as opposed to the other states using tax payer funds to pay for them - just doesn’t ring well with me as far a crony capitalism. OK, a lobbyist for that company worked on Perry’s staff. ALL the states and ALL the governor’s were implementing Gardasil programs. Those vaccines were going to cost something, and Merck would get money for those vaccines REGARDLESS of how they were paid. Should all the other states implementing Gardasil at that time be charged with crony capitalism for giving Merck tax-payer money they took to pay them, or should we just blame Perry for trying to keep the funding and oversight at the local level?
Yes, and an effective distraction at that. The default (legislative opt out) exists when he is silent on the point, just like in South Carolina.
He made opting out of ALL vaccines easier by making the application possible via internet. That change wasn't to be applicable only to the HPV vaccine; and that change (application via internet) is available now, even though HPV vaccination has been stricken from the state schedule of "mandatory" vaccinations.
You lied by saying there was no opt-out clause. Show some personal integrity and admit you were either ignorant or lying about the opt-out. Spinning the supposed difficulty of opting out of this EO that never went into effect distracts from the fact there was an opt-out, and that Perry mentioned it in his brief press release after issuing the flawed EO.
The insurance law in Texas is that if a vaccine is mandatory, then it must be 100% covered by insurance. Providing this benefit is a condition of selling insurance in Texas. So, mandating the vaccine would certainly cause more sales of Gardasil - and that is the point, even if the motivation is to reduce the number of cervical cancers.
What would have happened is that insurance rates would have gone up, to cover the cost of the mandatory benefit. Uninsured and poverty patients are/were covered by public health programs - that's that case even now, with Gardasil being an optional vaccine. There is strong interest to increase the rate of vaccination, and public money is spent, today, to do so.
-- Should all the other states implementing Gardasil at that time be charged with crony capitalism for giving Merck tax-payer money they took to pay them, or should we just blame Perry for trying to keep the funding and oversight at the local level? --
Other than Texas, the only states that mandated Gardasil are Virginia and Washington, DC (not a state, I know). The Republicans in Virginia passed a reversal of the mandate this past January, but the Democrats in the Virginia Senate prevented that from passing.
It's much harder to make a charge of cronyism stick, when a great number of policy-makers are involved in vetting and implementing the policy.
Cronyism isn't just about money. George Bush nominated Harriet Miers, in part because she was a friend. She was not the best available choice for the job, or for the country.
That is good to see. Thank you for providing that!
Just sent you a response right before this one, and it actually applies to this. I had mentioned Rick Perry probably did expect too much of too many parents.
These steps are not particularly difficult, but this process does involve parental involvement, and many parents are not involved enough to go out of their way even this much. Those parents who have already given up a lot of their parental rights by putting their children in government schools, handing their kids over to the government in partial to raise, are not always the most involved parents to begin with. Not all, but many. If they don’t care enough already than to relinquish their oversight during school hours to the government, why should we really expect them to care enough to opt-out?
I wish he would have found another way to have kept this at a local level in his quest to accept the federal funds (which would have come with federal oversight), and as I mentioned in my last response to you, his persistence of keeping it local IN THE WAY HE TRIED, has turned out to be a PR nightmare for him.
My only complaint is that this should not constitute a “crony” charge to it when Merck, regardless of their lobbyists, was getting paid by ALL the states, whether they were getting their funds through a conservative, local funding process or through a tax-payer funded processes as most of the other states implemented.
I don’t think we are light years apart, actually.
Involving the insurance companies required the process Perry took. It created a situation where the vaccine payments were covered for everyone, but it also required thevaccines to be made mandatory for the insurance companies to PAY for them. To offset that, then he had to create an opt-out so parents who did not want their children vaccinated could simply opt-out.
I can see the problems you are describing from trying to fund the Texas Gardasil program through insurance coverage. I agree this caused OTHER problems.
I’m also glad to see others who have examined the situation as a whole, including what was going on everyplace else in America at that time, sees a crony charge as being a far stretch of the imagination. That characterization of this ONE state among all the others, not taking all the others into account, just seems like a way to cast a deeper shadow than is really deserved.
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