Planned Parenthood Seeks to Keep Medicaid Funds Flowing During Legal Fight

TIME

Attorneys for Planned Parenthood argue that cutting Medicaid payments to their abortion providers will harm vulnerable populations with limited healthcare options. The arguments are part of a lawsuit challenging a provision in Donald Trump’s tax bill. The law, effective since July 4, blocks Medicaid funds to organizations focused on family planning services receiving over $800,000 from Medicaid in 2023.

Transcript

00:00I'll just say over a million patients a year rely on Planned Parenthood for Medicaid covered

00:06health care. That's over half of the patients that Planned Parenthood health care centers see,

00:14which is obviously a tremendous amount. And there's absolutely no indication that those

00:18patients have anywhere else to go if they are unable to seek their comprehensive necessary

00:24health care from Planned Parenthood centers, which is what the government is trying to stop them from

00:28doing, which is why this lawsuit is so important and why it is so important for us to get this law

00:33stopped. If this provision were to move forward, we're talking about over a million patients who

00:38use Medicaid nationwide. For Massachusetts specifically, out of the 30,000 patients that we

00:43service every year, 40% of those rely on Medicaid. So, you know, it is pretty devastating if this

00:51provision goes into effect. They will likely lose a trusted provider and, you know, there will be

00:56significant harm and devastation, both in, you know, just the health care system overall, but,

01:02you know, wait times, delays in care. This is unprecedented. As we say in our lawsuit, this is,

01:07they've been trying to do this for a very long time, over a decade, and they have not succeeded in

01:14actually passing it in Congress until now. But this is a culmination of a long-term plan. And, you know,

01:20we hope it still doesn't succeed. We continue to fight every single day. We believe that it's wrong,

01:26we believe it's illegal. And so it hasn't succeeded yet. We're currently, you know, under a court order

01:32that allows us to continue providing care. Care continues at Planned Parenthood. The TRO expires on

01:38Monday. And the goal of this hearing and the motion that we were arguing in front of the court today

01:44is to get that relief extended for a longer period of time so that care for these patients can continue

01:51for the foreseeable future. I mean, I think the bottom line of their argument is, as they say in

01:57their briefing, so what, right? That they want to do this. They hate abortion. They're willing to

02:04sacrifice people's access to all manner of health care in order to make a statement about abortion.

02:11And when we point to the impacts, they shrug their shoulders and say, so what? A very central and

02:16important part of Planned Parenthood's mission is to serve low-income patients and make sure that

02:21everybody has an opportunity to receive necessarily necessary health care no matter where they live

02:26and no matter who they are and no matter what their income level is. And, you know, what we've seen

02:33from this law and the behavior of this administration is that they don't care about that and they want

02:40to punish us at the expense of those people. It's wrong and it's unconstitutional. And that's why we're here.

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