This was going to happen sooner or later.
Right there with them
Texas health officials say they are kicking Planned Parenthood out of the state Medicaid program entirely over what they called “acts of misconduct” revealed in undercover videos filmed earlier this year.
Republican state leaders, who vehemently oppose abortion, have worked for years to curb taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood — despite the fact that its clinics may not receive such funding if they perform the procedure.
Monday’s decision means even Planned Parenthood clinics that only provide well-woman care, like cancer screenings, pregnancy tests and birth control, will also be cut out of receiving dollars from Medicaid, the joint state-federal insurer of the poor.
The vast majority of Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas comes from the federal government. Texas spent just $310,000 from its own coffers on the women’s health organization in 2015, but it also dispersed $2.8 million in federal dollars to those clinics. A spokesman for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
[…]
On Monday, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission’s inspector general, Stuart Bowen, wrote to Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast that the women’s health provider had violated state Medicaid rules and put Texans at risk of infection. Citing the sting videos, Bowen said Planned Parenthood officials disregarded federal law by agreeing to change the timing or method of abortions in order to procure fetal tissue for medical research.
As a result, the state will no longer allow any Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas to receive Medicaid funding. Last year, Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas received $3.05 million in federal funds through Medicaid for family planning services like birth control and pregnancy tests.
Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast spokeswoman Rochelle Tafolla described the state’s efforts to block Medicaid patients from receiving care from any of the organization’s clinics as “politically motivated.” Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast does not currently participate in fetal tissue donation, the organization says, but did in 2010, in conjunction with a University of Texas Medical Branch study on miscarriage.
“Tens of thousands of women are already going without care after years of policies aimed at blocking access to care at Planned Parenthood,” Tafolla said. “Now Texas politicians are using a thoroughly discredited, bogus attack against Planned Parenthood as a shameful excuse to attack Texas women’s health yet again.”
This has been the end goal for Texas Republicans for several years now, so like I said, no surprise, and one excuse is as good as another. I would point out that multiple states have investigated these videos and found nothing – Texas, as well as Harris County, is doing its own investigation, and one presumes they have nothing worthwhile to show for it as yet. As such, this may be their consolation prize, since coming away empty-handed was not an option. What comes next is almost certainly a lawsuit, since Texas doesn’t exactly have the authority to do this. If they could have, they would have done this much earlier than this. In the meantime, still more women will lose their access to healthcare. That’s the reality we unfortunately live in, and much as I hate to say it, nothing will change until our state leadership does. BOR, Newsdesk, and the Observer have more.
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