The HHS contraception mandate is being fought by Christian employers who not only oppose birth control but believe that emergency contraception (Plan B), included in the benefit, causes abortions. Several lawsuits against the mandate will now be going to the Supreme Court. But the argument that Plan B is an abortifacient has now been discredited. Feigning concern for women's health, Fox's "Medical A Team" member and "serial health care reform medical misinformer" Dr. Marc Siegel is using new revelations about the effectiveness of Plan B, on overweight women, to attack the Obama administration over the hated HHS mandate and make the bogus case for the aforementioned businesses that these pills cause abortions. (Take heed, SCOTUS!) He also worked in the right wing/Fox News hysteria about over the counter access to Plan B. Pretty slick. Fox News - where else can you get a dose of propaganda with your medicine!?
Dr. Marc Siegel's reputation, as an agenda driven purveyor of misinformation, is well earned given that he, along with other members of Fox's crack(pot) "Medical A Team," use their medical "expertise" to promote right wing propaganda about the ACA and policies enacted by Obama's HHS. Such was the case when fellow A Team member Dr. Manny Alvarez had a total Fox freak-out over HHS's decision, made after a court decision by a Reagan appointee, to allow teenagers access to emergency contraception (Plan B) over the counter. Plan B is back in the news with the revelation that it is ineffective for women over a given weight. Obviously, from a women's health perspective, this is problematic. But thankfully we have Dr. Marc Siegel to warn us of the dangers of this drug which, thanks to Obamacare, is being foisted on unsuspecting women without the benefit of doctors, like Dr. Siegel, who really know what's going on - although in this case, the good Doctor doesn't seem to have a clue! Or does he?
This morning, on alleged straight "news" show, America's Newsroom, Heather Childers reported on the weight issue as it relates to Plan B. So far, so good. But then she tossed to Siegel for an explanation of how Plan B works. He said that it is "like a surge of progesterone and it prevents implantation..."
Whoa, stop right here. According to the NY Times, the new label on the drug states that it "cannot stop a fertilized egg from attaching to the womb." The article also references an earlier NY Times article which reported the following. "Scientific studies provided strong evidence that levonorgestrel does not block implantation. References to the possibility of blocking implantation were then removed from the websites of the National Institutes of Health and the Mayo Clinic. And an F.D.A. spokeswoman, Erica Jefferson, said that “the emerging data on Plan B suggest that it does not inhibit implantation.”
After addressing the weight issue, Siegel launched into the propaganda: "This is happening at a time that the US Supreme Court is trying to decide there's a problem with Obamacare mandating that religious groups cover products just like this without a doctor even involved, without a pharmacist even involved. You could be 12 years old, 170 pounds, walk into a pharmacy, pick up Plan B, use it inappropriately, it doesn't work you end up pregnant. That's where the future of health care is going.
Talk about misinformation. Siegel not only doesn't explain the SCOTUS cases, but he conveys the impression that the cases are about the necessity of having a doctor prescribe pills that the FDA deems safe without a prescription. This being Fox News, nobody mentioned that the new label for the drug clearly states that "it loses effectiveness in women weighing more than 165 pounds and does not work in women over 176 pounds" and that "Planned Parenthood already tells women with a body mass index over 30 that levonorgestrel is 'not recommended'." But that really wasn't the main issue which was that these are really abortion drugs that are being provided by the evil Obama administration.
The "A" in the phrase used for Fox's medical team doesn't denote a grade but the first letter of a body orifice!