Right there with them
A new study released Wednesday reports that after anti-abortion Texas lawmakers blocked Planned Parenthood from participating in the Texas Women’s Health Program (TWHP) in 2013, fewer low-income women received the most effective kinds of contraception. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is also the first to analyze the subsequent significant rise in some Medicaid-covered deliveries after the provider’s ouster.
Comparing quarterly medical and pharmaceutical claims from 2011 to 2014, researchers with the Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP) found that 35 percent fewer patients received highly effective intrauterine devices (IUDs) and implants — known as long-acting, reversible contraception (LARC) — over the four-year period. Claims for the injectable Depo shot, which requires follow up every three months, decreased by 31 percent. Researchers found that the rate of Medicaid-covered deliveries among women in the Depo group then increased by 27 percent.
The reduction in claims, said lead author Amanda Stevenson, highlights the fact that despite recent state efforts to recruit more providers, and claims of successwithout Planned Parenthood, patients have lost services.
“The reproductive health safety net cannot just absorb all of the demand for highly effective contraception when you remove Planned Parenthood from the network,” Stevenson told the Observer. TxPEP’s findings, she said, “directly contradict” claims “that Planned Parenthood can be removed from federally-funded healthcare programs and other providers will just step up to pick up the slack.”
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For this study, TxPEP focused on patient claims that reflect the eligibility criteria for enrollees in the TWHP: legal Texas residents between the ages of 18 and 44 and who live at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty line (an annual income of approximately $44,000 for a family of four). They also compared services in counties with and without a Planned Parenthood health center.
The study found that contraceptive claims decreased most dramatically in counties with Planned Parenthood clinics, while counties without a Planned Parenthood clinic were largely unaffected.
The percentage of women who returned for their birth control shot every three months illustrates the long-term impact of losing Planned Parenthood as a program provider. Before the exclusion, 56.9 percent of patients living in counties with a Planned Parenthood clinic received their follow-up injections. After the exclusion, just 37.7 percent of patients got their subsequent shots.
In addition to cutting family planning funding by more than $70 million, the 2011 Legislature also funneled what remained of the state’s available family planning dollars away from specialty reproductive health providers, including Planned Parenthood. That, compounded by the cuts, led to the closure of 82 family planning clinics statewide; about one third of those were Planned Parenthood health centers.
I don’t even know what else to say, so I’m just going to let this speak for itself. Just repeat after me: Nothing will change until our electoral results change.