During the entirety of the debate in Texas over abortion and unnecessary safety issues and regulating who can and who cannot get an abortion, there is a side story going on that not many are paying attention to.? Everything on both sides of the argument all boils down to one single woman in the state of Texas.? This one woman is vice president of government relations at United Surgical Partners International, an Addison, Texas company that runs hospitals and surgery centers co-owned by doctors.? She has held leadership positions with the Texas Physician Hospitals Advocacy Center and the Texas Ambulatory Surgery Center Society, both headed by Austin lobbyist Bobby Hillert.? She is a very strong lobbyist and advocate for physician owned healthcare facilities, and sat on the PAC committee of Hillert’s ambulatory group, which endorsed Rick Perry’s 2010 re-election.? That woman’s name is?Milla Perry Jones, and she is the sister of Texas Governor Rick Perry.
Texas HB2? has four main provisions:
- ban abortion at 20 weeks post-fertilization and recognize that the state has a compelling interest to protect fetuses from pain
- require doctors performing abortions to have hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles of the facility
- require doctors to administer the abortion-inducing drug RU-486 in person, rather than allow the woman to take it at home
- require abortions ? including drug-induced ones ? to be performed in ambulatory surgical centers
It’s that last provision of “ambulatory surgical centers” that is key in how she and other investors would gain in profit. Jones’s company owns interests in 13 U.S. surgical hospitals and 171 surgical centers. By closing down nonprofit clinics that also have services for abortion, families that normally frequent those clinics for basic healthcare would be forced to use privately owned health facilities at an increased cost to those families. In one of many studies, a 2006 federal report?found that Medicare costs are 20 percent higher at doctor-owned orthopedic surgical hospitals than at competing community hospitals.
Jones first became a concern in October 2012, when the?Texas Observer?reported that Jones and her colleagues had significant financial interest in the repeal of Obamacare and the ability to drive up healthcare costs to Medicaid within privately owned health facilities.? Since that time, it has come to light that through legislation and unnecessary restrictions on healthcare, she stands to profit on an enormous level at the closure of these clinics.? A number of our congressman own investment shares in these private health facilities.? Once nonprofit clinics like Planned Parenthood are shut down, the privately owned clinics and their investors will swim in profits.
It has been falsely suggested that Milla Jones collaborated with her brother or was otherwise involved in the recently proposed legislation requiring facilities which perform abortions to meet the same standards as ambulatory surgery centers,?said Kristin Blewett, the company’s senior vice president of communications. Governor Perry’s office has in the past denied the allegations, but is now refusing to comment.
According to OpenSecrets.org, during the 2012 election year, Jones’s PAC known as United Surgical Partners International spent $72,250 on donations to candidates in federal elections. The majority of their donors are all Texas-based physicians. United Surgical, and two other PAC’s, North Cypress and Doctors Hospital at Renaissance, have paid federal lobbyists?including former Congressman Tom Loeffler?almost 3 million since 2005. Joined by two Perry Jones affiliated trade groups, these same doctor-owned interests paid 24 Texas lobbyists?including U.S. Senator John Cornyn’s daughter?up to 3.4 million in that period.
However you personally feel about the subject of abortion, these laws are ridiculous, grotesque, and unsound to both the medical community at large and the millions of people being suppressed by these “pro-life” legislators.? Once you take the topic of abortion out of the argument, it’s pretty clear what their true designs really are. Profit.
Edited and published by CB
