Ugh.
Right there with them
Four years after Texas gave up millions of dollars in federal Medicaid funds so it could ban Planned Parenthood from participating in a family planning program for low-income women, the state is asking the Trump administration for the money back.
The request presents an important early test for the administration of President Trump, who recently appointed an anti-abortion official to oversee federal family planning programs. Under President Obama, federal health officials would not allow Medicaid funds to flow to the Texas program after it excluded Planned Parenthood, because federal law requires states to give Medicaid beneficiaries their choice of “any willing provider.”
If the administration agrees to restore the funding for Texas, it could effectively give states the greenlight to ban Planned Parenthood from Medicaid family planning programs with no financial consequences.
“They’re asking the federal government to do a 180 on its Medicaid program rules,” said Elizabeth Nash, a policy analyst at the Guttmacher Institute, a research center that supports abortion rights. “And depending how this shakes out, you could see a number of other states follow suit.”
[…]
In its draft waiver application, the state said it hoped that by turning Healthy Texas Women back into a Medicaid waiver program, it would improve access and participation. The application noted that Texas had the nation’s highest birthrate, with more than 400,000 births in 2015, more than half of which were paid for by Medicaid. It also noted than more than one-third of pregnancies in the state were reported as unintended, and that Texas had one of the highest teen birthrates in the country.
On Monday, at a public hearing on the plan in Austin, several women and representatives of health advocacy groups expressed concern about the request.
“A strong Healthy Texas Women program should include Planned Parenthood,” said Blanca Murillo, 25, who said she relied on Planned Parenthood for contraception that helped treat her polycystic ovary syndrome when she was a student at the University of Texas. “I’m asking the state to choose the health of Texas women — which it has a duty to protect — over scoring political points.”
Stacey Pogue, senior policy analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a liberal research group, pointed to the so-called freedom of choice provision in Medicaid and said she was concerned that “submitting the waiver as is would invite litigation.”
A spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or C.M.S., which oversees Medicaid waiver programs, declined to comment.
Carrie Williams, a spokeswoman for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, said, “We’re been encouraged to present new and innovative ideas to C.M.S. for discussion for possible funding. This is a new administration, and we’re looking at what funding opportunities may exist for us.”
Texas is also seeking to cut off all Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood; a federal judge blocked the effort earlier this year, but the state is appealing the decision.
It’s for stuff like this that Republicans have remained loyal to Trump regardless of the disaster he creates everywhere. They want their shiny ideological objects, and it doesn’t get much shinier than shivving Planned Parenthood. Who cares if some of the money winds up going to frauds? It’s not like they actually cared about women’s health in the first place. So yes, I expect this request to be granted in short order, and then replicated in other states. The only way to undo that is going to be to undo who is in charge of the government. The Associated Press, the Trib, and the Current have more.