Republicans will likely bar states from providing Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood when they vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) early this year, if they use the reconciliation bill President Obama vetoed in 2016 as a guide. That would cause thousands of low-income women to lose access to care and raise state and federal Medicaid costs related to unplanned pregnancies.
Nearly 400,000 low-income women would have lost access to care under a one-year prohibition on Planned Parenthood funding that the House passed in 2015, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
Medicaid is the largest funder of family planning services, and Planned Parenthood is a major provider of those services for low-income women. In over two-thirds of counties with Planned Parenthood clinics, the clinics serve at least half of all women receiving publicly funded contraceptive services; in one-fifth of the counties, Planned Parenthood serves all such women. The women most likely to lose access to care under the House bill live in areas without other clinics serving low-income populations, CBO found.
Some states have tried to bar Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs by claiming it isn’t qualified simply because it provides abortions, separate from its participation in Medicaid. Courts have deemed these attempts unlawful, as Medicaid prohibits states from disqualifying providers for reasons unrelated to their ability to provide services in a professionally competent, safe, legal, and ethical manner, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently reaffirmed this prohibition in guidance to states. (Federal Medicaid funds can’t pay for abortions except in cases of danger to the life of the mother, rape, or incest.) But last year’s ACA repeal bill would have accomplished what those states had tried, by changing federal law to prohibit all states from including Planned Parenthood in their Medicaid programs.
Defunding Planned Parenthood would have devastating effects. Texas eliminated Planned Parenthood from its state family planning program in 2013 after an earlier round of cuts in funding for family planning services. Researchers studying the impact found a 35 percent drop in women using long-acting contraception and a 27 percent rise in births among women who had previously used injectable contraception. After Planned Parenthood health centers closed in Wisconsin and Texas, fewer women got breast exams and Pap tests, other research found.
Planned Parenthood saw 2.5 million patients in 2014. About three-quarters of them have incomes below 150 percent of the poverty line, and about 60 percent get their care through Medicaid or the federally funded Title X family planning program. If Republican leaders bar Planned Parenthood from Medicaid, they’ll leave many of these women without preventive and primary care, as well as family planning services.
Help us Prepare for Trump’s Day One
Trump is busy getting ready for Day One of his presidency – but so is Truthout.
Trump has made it no secret that he is planning a demolition-style attack on both specific communities and democracy as a whole, beginning on his first day in office. With over 25 executive orders and directives queued up for January 20, he’s promised to “launch the largest deportation program in American history,” roll back anti-discrimination protections for transgender students, and implement a “drill, drill, drill” approach to ramp up oil and gas extraction.
Organizations like Truthout are also being threatened by legislation like HR 9495, the “nonprofit killer bill” that would allow the Treasury Secretary to declare any nonprofit a “terrorist-supporting organization” and strip its tax-exempt status without due process. Progressive media like Truthout that has courageously focused on reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza are in the bill’s crosshairs.
As journalists, we have a responsibility to look at hard realities and communicate them to you. We hope that you, like us, can use this information to prepare for what’s to come.
And if you feel uncertain about what to do in the face of a second Trump administration, we invite you to be an indispensable part of Truthout’s preparations.
In addition to covering the widespread onslaught of draconian policy, we’re shoring up our resources for what might come next for progressive media: bad-faith lawsuits from far-right ghouls, legislation that seeks to strip us of our ability to receive tax-deductible donations, and further throttling of our reach on social media platforms owned by Trump’s sycophants.
We’re preparing right now for Trump’s Day One: building a brave coalition of movement media; reaching out to the activists, academics, and thinkers we trust to shine a light on the inner workings of authoritarianism; and planning to use journalism as a tool to equip movements to protect the people, lands, and principles most vulnerable to Trump’s destruction.
We urgently need your help to prepare. As you know, our December fundraiser is our most important of the year and will determine the scale of work we’ll be able to do in 2025. We’ve set two goals: to raise $136,000 in one-time donations and to add 1440 new monthly donors by midnight on December 31.
Today, we’re asking all of our readers to start a monthly donation or make a one-time donation – as a commitment to stand with us on day one of Trump’s presidency, and every day after that, as we produce journalism that combats authoritarianism, censorship, injustice, and misinformation. You’re an essential part of our future – please join the movement by making a tax-deductible donation today.
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