Pause, please: Misspending is a bad word

This news story on KUOW gave me a hot flash: "'Menopause is not a bad word.' New bill aims to increase awareness, reduce stigma." It highlighted a proposal to expand federal research on menopause, establish a national public awareness program and support improved training for health care providers. The price tag for the Senate bill titled the Advancing Menopause Care and Mid-Life Women's Health Act? $275 million over five years.

This is exactly the sort of putting wants ahead of needs that only people using other people's money can do. In this case, many of the efforts in the act will be duplicative at best or wasteful at worst. A public awareness campaign for $50 million? I am a 52-year-old woman. I get dozens of ads or conversations aimed at me each week discussing menopause. Pill makers are constantly suggesting they have medication to help women stop burning up. Doctors are informed and knowledgeable and can get my peers up to speed or pointed in right directions.

Anything women want to know about menopause is also a Google search away. Without the public awareness campaign proposed, the United States Office on Women's Health is already supplying information on menopause. Here's just one government site I found addressing menopause in about two seconds: http://www.womenshealth.gov/menopause. A random Google search of "menopause" immediately brought me a ton of information from the North American Menopause Society, the Mayo Clinic, the National Institute on Aging, WebMD, the National Institutes of Health, the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins Medicine, MedlinePlus.gov, etc., etc. There are articles, videos, FAQs, cartoons.

Public awareness is not scarce. Still, Sen. Patty Murray, the bill's sponsor, said in a news conference, "Menopause is not a bad word. It's not something to be ashamed of. ... So there's no real reason that any woman should feel like she's going through it alone, or like she can't find reliable information, or the health care answers and options she needs."

I don't know any women who feel alone. It's hard to believe women can't find reliable information. Even typing in "hot at night" gets you right back to "menopause" and various medical institutions and the government.

Maybe a case can be made that more money for research is needed, but another Google search using "research on menopause" shows that there is a lot of study being done, including government-sponsored research.

Health care costs in the United States are not sustainable and are ever-increasing. Our third-party payer system, an aging population, obesity, government regulations, workforce challenges and misapplication of Medicaid all contribute to that. Lawmakers bragging that they are proposing "historic," bipartisan legislation to boost menopause awareness, training and research seems off-target.

This girl is on fire.

–– Elizabeth New is a Policy Analyst and Director of the Centers for Health Care and Worker Rights. She can be reached at enew@washingtonpolicy.org