So it turns out that Planned Parenthood charges patients the insane amount of $800 for an abortion pill.
I’m floored by all these revelations. When I donated to the organization, I thought it was a non-profit that provided crucial services to people in need. And now it turns out that, instead, it ripped off desperate women to keep its loser bureaucrats in extreme luxury.
This is beyond disgusting.
Clarissa's Blog 
Sound to me like it costs them a lot, and that they pass on the cost if they can:
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/abortion/the-abortion-pill#sthash.U9usxYVJ.dpuf
Here’s from the manufacturer’s website:
http://earlyoptionpill.com/faq/
If you don’t do your research correctly, you end up with more flame and smoke than light.
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This piece of garbage director of PP is costing me and you half a million per year. In return, she charges desperate women insane amounts of money for a pill that doesn’t even work half the time.
I’m beyond shocked that people allow crooks like Gov. Rauner or this piece of trash to con us all and don’t even seem to mind.
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I know several women who have used the non-surgical abortion method. The cost is high because of drug company price gouging and state requirements for unnecessary ultrasounds; $800 is higher than I have ever heard of, however.
I have never known the drugs to fail in the case of any woman I know. Where did you get the “doesn’t even work half the time” data?
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Well PP must be a sliding scale then because I personally know women who got the abortion pill for about 25.00.
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Don’t confuse Clarissa with the facts, you’ll only make her angry.
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Yes, it does make me angry to see PP destroyed by a bunch of greedy freaks. How very shocking that I’d care.
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Greedy freaks, who, unless Evalina or her friend are lying, charge 25$ for a pill and services connected with it when the pill itself can cost 800$.
Okay, now I’m convinced.
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Do you really feel that it’s OK to pay half a million dollars of your and my money to a person under whose leadership PP is being destroyed? And who, by the way, insists that PP charges $800 for the pill.
Why do you feel the need to defend this immensely rich woman?
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Truly, the Americans’ capacity to worship the super rich knows no bounds.
This is a rich person. Very rich. She is not on your side. She can never be on your side.
It’s like class solidarity is dead altogether. Everybody is looking for a millionaire to deliver them from all evil.
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Then the half a mil director has no idea what services the organization she runs offers and at what price. Of course, it’s not like we can expect her to do any actual work for this money.
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Well, she’s the equivalent of a CEO — not getting paid to know the nuts-and-bolts operational details of her organization. That’s what the peons making less than 10% of her salary are for. She’s getting paid to defend Planned Parenthood in front of congress without looking like too much of an idiot.
Obama is our commander-in-chief, and he obviously doesn’t know anything about the vast military that he commands. Putin knows more about killing bears than Syrians or Ukrainians. I could go on, but that’s how bureaucracies work…
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If that is her way of NOT looking like an idiot, I really don’t want to see the alternative.
Everybody is piling on Fiorina for running HP into the ground. This broad did the same but to a publicly owned organization, and everybody defends her. This is absolutely insane.
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Planned Parenthood isn’t a publicly owned organization. From a legal standpoint, it’s a national “not-for-profit organization” — in other words, a charity. As such, it provides many valuable services to needy women, including abortion services (which are a medical necessity in some cases).
That it’s a bloated, badly run charity shouldn’t surprise anyone — name a national or international charity that isn’t.
But it’s a charity that consistently takes in more money than its expenses, so it doesn’t need federal funding and shouldn’t be on the public dole.
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Whatever method is used to throw this overpaid piece of trash in her ass is good with me.
There’s no need to convince me that PP served crucial purposes. I know it, I donated to the organization. But it’s being run into the ground by a bunch of inept, overpaid idiots. And I have no idea why it freaks everybody out so much when I say it.
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Hey, remember that old Ukrainian saying? “When you kill a shrike, another takes its place?”
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You’re beginning to sound like a creature yourself, Clarissa. Dehumanizing somebody you don’t like is so feminist these days.
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I don’t know if 800 USD qualifies as a normal cost for such a pill in the US …
I do know, however, that 3000+ GBP per month was more or less what Terry Pratchett was paying for his medication that wasn’t covered under NHS formulary rules.
None of the high price of medical care surprises me anymore, but I suppose I should look into whether my medevac coverage is sufficient for when my global insurance refuses to cover me in the US because of sticker shock, insisting I get flown out to a less costly country …
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This is not an endorsement of this practice, only an observation: half a million is average pay for the directors of national non-profits. I will give you two examples from national organizations that serve communities I am affiliated with.
The breast cancer organization Susan B. Komen, which pays its director in the mid-six figures, advertises that it is “for the cure” but distributes only a very small amount of its annual budget to research into State IV breast cancer, which is the type that kills you (and so needless to say, really needs a cure). They spend gobs on “awareness” (is anyone not aware of cancer’s existence?), and do next to nothing to help actual individuals with breast cancer, unless you think pink swag is of use to anyone.
Autism Speaks, which also pays its director in the mid-six figures, is the bane of the autistic self-advocacy movement, which complains (rightly so) that much of what AS does is deeply insulting to autistics (they underwrite a lot of genetic research). And again, they do not do anything that helps individuals, and families with members on the spectrum, many of whom could use some actual material support.
At least Planned Parenthood serves real individuals! If you want your charity dollars to go to organizations that do not overpay their management, you will probably need to limit yourself to small, grassroots, all-volunteer organizations like your local community theater.
Now on to the question, “Is Planned Parenthood on the federal dole?” No.
Many of the individuals PP serves are on Medicaid. After they receive health care from PP, Medicaid reimburses PP. It is no different than when an individual with private health insurance visits their doctor in his/her office, after which the health insurance company reimburses the doctor’s office for the services rendered.
Theoretically, a person on Medicaid could visit the same doctor the person with private insurance does, and that does happen sometimes. But doctors lose money on Medicaid patients (the reimbursements rates do not cover all the expenses), so they strictly limit how many Medicaid patients they will see (this can be a big issue for people with disabilities on Medicaid looking for health care).
PP has no such limits so they see a lot of patients on Medicaid. How do they make up the difference between reimbursement and expense? In part by donations like the ones Clarissa has made in the past.
Is it unusual for non-profits to collect fees for services? Not at all. Nowadays, non-profits work hard to create and maintain earned income streams, otherwise many would not have enough money to operate, even if they did save money by paying their management more reasonably.
It is because non-profits do often have profit-making activities that the claim that PP was making money off of fetuses had sticking power. But as discussed elsewhere, there are laws against profiting this way and PP obeyed those laws.
Finally, what about those $800 abortion pills? I can’t say, this is out of my knowledge base. But I would not be surprised that this is something of a PR gambit, allowing PP to say later, 99.99% of our patients were given sliding-scale discounts, please help us continue to serve those without enough means.
Maybe I do not need to mention this here, but Medicaid does not reimburse any abortion-related expenses. That went out when Carter was president.
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Autism Speaks is a disgusting, vicious organization that is rightfully hated by autistics. It’s also a complete scam.
Here is another disgusting charity scam: https://clarissasblog.com/2014/05/28/disgusting-charity/
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From the Planned Parenthood website:
“Where Can I Get a Medication Abortion? How Much Does Medication Abortion Cost?
Visit a Planned Parenthood health center, a clinic, or a private health care provider to find out where you can get the abortion pill. Planned Parenthood centers that do not provide it can refer you to someone who does.
Nationwide, it can cost up to $800, but it’s often less. Costs may be more or less depending on whatever additional tests, visits, or exams are needed.”
– See more at: https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/abortion/the-abortion-pill#sthash.Ets8Fkw8.dpuf
It looks to me like that is just the cost of the pill and Planned Parenthood has nothing to do with it. Why are you convinced that the price is Planned Parenthood’s doing?
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Of course, it’s the cost that a price-gouging drug company places on the pill. But one would expect that if PP sends its overpaid, stupid and disgusting employees to giggle and fall out of their blouses at sales reps of these companies, they would at least manage to negotiate better prices.
Otherwise, PP is nothing but a sales agent of price-gouging drug companies. Now, a question: why are we, the taxpayers, pouring so much of our money to
a) keep these stupid, useless broads in booze and diamonds
and
b) provide a legion of free sales agents to a profit-seeking drug company?
Here people were falling all over themselves to convince me that the Nukatola animal was fellating the drug company rep so actively because he was being hugely useful to PP. Now it’s turning out that it’s PP that is hugely useful to the drug rep in a variety of ways. And what, we will still keep sitting here passively because “that’s just how things are done”?
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Your initial post indicated that you thought the price was Planned Parenthood’s idea. I was responding to that. Also, as Evelina Anville mentioned, the actual price paid by the women seems to be a sliding scale.
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No, it did not. Let’s not try to read my thoughts because I’m always extremely direct and obsessively articulate about everything.
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\ Of course, it’s the cost that a price-gouging drug company places on the pill. But one would expect that if PP sends its overpaid, stupid and disgusting employees to giggle and fall out of their blouses at sales reps of these companies, they would at least manage to negotiate better prices.
Are you sure PP doesn’t manage to negotiate better prices? Getting discounts for buying large quantities is standard in the business world. Even as a single customer, price per fixed amount [of food XYZ] is usually lower, if you buy bigger pack.
As I understood, in addition to the pill, PP provides medical supervision to women taking it, which must also cost quite a lot (cost of buildings, doctors and nurses, medical equipment, etc.) If the total cost for women is close to the cost of the pill itself, PP is doing not a bad job. Having abortion via the pill seems to be potentially much more complicated than buying the pill from the company and taking it alone in one’s own house.
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I’m only repeating what the organization’s director said. If the price is different and she manages to be unaware of that (just like she’s unaware of half the issues she was asked at the hearing), that’s not a good sign either.
I am convinced that the organization will only benefit if the overpaid and useless leadership is fired and better leaders come in its place.
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