Senate health-care bill defunding Planned Parenthood could leave women with few options
Planned Parenthood would be cut off from Medicaid funding for one year under the Senate’s health-care bill. That would leave other clinics scrambling to pick up the organization’s Medicaid clients, in some cases needing to more than triple their contraception caseloads. And in the likely event that clinics can’t expand that much that quickly, the bill would leave many of Planned Parenthood’s 2.4 million annual patients without care, at least temporarily.
Republicans such as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) who support the defunding say that community health centers can make up the difference. These health centers, also known as federally qualified health centers or FQHCs, receive federal funds to provide health care to low-income people, sometimes offering reproductive services such as birth control and STI testing.
But data from the Guttmacher Institute, which advocates abortion rights, shows the gap that would be left by defunding Planned Parenthood, which serves one-third of all contraception clients among family-planning clinics nationwide, would be very difficult to fill. In some states, Planned Parenthood serves six times as many contraception patients as FQHCs. Under the defunding, people on Medicaid, who make up more than half of Planned Parenthood’s clients, would probably have to go to other clinics. If FQHCs in those states were to absorb those patients, as Republicans say they could, they would have to multiply their caseloads overnight. And if the budget cuts forced Planned Parenthood clinics to limit their hours or close their doors, there would be even more patients for FQHCs to take in.
“The suggestion that FQHCs become the main source of publicly funded family planning care is a matter of political convenience, not a viable policy proposal,” according to a Guttmacher report.
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Recent events seem to back up that assertion. It’s not realistic for FQHCs to grow that much that quickly. In a time of rapid expansion, after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act brought more federal funding and patient demand, FQHCs were able to serve 25 percent more patients in 2015 than in 2010. But they’re still unable to meet demand, according to the Guttmacher report. And in Texas, where Planned Parenthood was cut off from Medicaid beginning in 2013, the number of contraceptive claims by low-income women dropped by about a third, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Supporters of the defunding contend that it wouldn’t worsen access to contraception. “Birth control is widely available, through many places,” said Kristi Hamrick, a spokeswoman for the antiabortion group Americans United For Life. She says shifting women from Planned Parenthood to FQHCs would “save them time, money and effort” because those health centers provide other services, such as primary care. And it would take money and patients away from Planned Parenthood, a major abortion provider nationwide.
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