Kaiser Updates

Highlights from Kaiser:

The Oregon Board of Pharmacy on Wednesday approved a position statement that requires pharmacists who refuse to dispense a medication to promptly refer patients to another pharmacist who will fill such prescriptions, the Oregonian reports. Oregon law allows pharmacists with moral objections to drugs such as emergency contraception to refuse to dispense it. However, the pharmacy board statement says people seeking prescriptions must be provided means of receiving it promptly. In addition, the statement prohibits pharmacists from altering, seizing or destroying prescriptions or lecturing patients on religious or moral beliefs. The statement follows an appeal from the Seattle-based Northwest Women's Law Center on behalf of Planned Parenthood of Columbia/Willamette and NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon, according to pharmacy board Executive Director Gary Schnabel.

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene on Thursday launched "Healthy Teens," an initiative designed to make reproductive health care more accessible to teenagers in an effort to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, the AP/Long Island Newsday reports. As part of the program -- which will be launched in the Bronx and then is expected to expand to Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island -- the department is recommending that when providing sexual and reproductive health services to teenagers, health care providers should ensure confidentiality; make their facilities inviting; take teens' culture, ethnicity, religion, language, educational level, gender and sexual orientation into account; conduct drug use or mental health screenings and offer referrals; provide contraceptives and related counseling; and offer help with decisions about pregnancy.

FDA in a letter dated June 9 denied a petition dated Feb 14, 2001 from more than 60 family planning and health groups that requested Barr Laboratories' emergency contraceptive Plan B be sold without a prescription, Bloomberg/CongressDaily reports. "FDA, in the thrall of the Bush administration's anti-science agenda, has put aside its mission to promote public health in favor of depriving women of easier access to this important drug," Simon Heller, attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, one of the groups involved with the petition, said (CRR release, 6/12).

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in California on Friday ruled that health care groups representing providers who oppose abortion rights can join the Bush administration in a lawsuit to defend a provision that blocks federal funding for state, local or federal government agencies that discriminate against health care workers or facilities that do not provide abortion services, Reuters reports. The Weldon Amendment -- part of a $388 billion spending measure (HR 4818) signed by President Bush in December 2004 -- prohibits federal, state and local agencies from requiring doctors, hospitals, health plans or other health care entities to provide abortion services or referrals to a different provider. The provision also bans the agencies from taking action against providers and insurers who do not provide or cover abortion services and extends to health care providers nationwide the same "conscience protection" currently given to medical students who do not want to undergo abortion training.