Planned Parenthood, Medicaid Expansion, and Women's Health

We here in Texas are used to having Medicaid weaponized in all sorts of ways. Refusing federal dollars to fund eligibility expansion is a particularly cruel and punitive policy directed at over a million low-income individuals, many of whom are the same "essential workers" who are so praised by the policy-makers (who simultaneously deny them Medicaid coverage) for their sacrifices during the present pandemic. Without eligibility reform, Texas will continue to deny Medicaid coverage for a two-parent family of four that makes more than $285 per month. Think about that. A family with one bread-winner working for the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour for 40 hours a week ($290) -- often at jobs where health insurance is either not available or not affordable -- makes too much for enrollment in Medicaid.

Another example of weaponization was pointed out in an op-ed in the New York Times (02-17-2021) by Dr. Samuel Dickman, an internist and the medical director for primary care at Planned Parenthood South Texas:

For the past several years, Texas politicians have worked to cut off Medicaid recipients’ access to the wide range of services offered by Planned Parenthood. Now, barring an extension of a state district court’s temporary block on their efforts, they may have gotten their way.

Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, and like-minded state officials targeted Planned Parenthood because it offers abortion services. But abortion services account for just a fraction of the care we provide, which means the consequences of a new policy would be far more sweeping.

If it goes into effect, this policy would block patients’ access to blood pressure checks, cancer screenings, birth control, S.T.D. treatment and other medical care routinely provided at Planned Parenthood health centers in Texas, where I serve as a medical director for primary care. Nationally these other essential services, not abortion care, account for 96 percent of Planned Parenthood’s patient visits; in Texas, for example, some 24,000 Medicaid patients received non-abortion care over the past four years.

 The aforementioned cruel and punitive nature of the proposed change should be obvious:

States’ denials of health care coverage, including Texas’ refusal to expand Medicaid, contributed to 461,000 excess deaths in 2018 that would have been averted if the United States had kept up with other wealthy countries, a tragedy documented in a report by my colleagues and me published this month in The Lancet.

It is also just bad policy. Not just bad health policy, which it obviously is, but bad fiscal policy as well. Untreated STDs will increase the cost of health care because of expensive later treatments. Forgone cancer screenings, untreated hypertension and a host of other chronic conditions only get more expensive the longer preventive care is postponed denied once Planned Parenthood is knocked out of the Medicaid program altogether. Gov. Abbott and his pals have to be stopped. If they aren't, any Medicaid expansion that Texas may stumble into (see yesterday's post) will leave these 24,000 women and many others in years to come out in the cold.