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Friday, May 13, 2011

Ind. Law - "Planned Parenthood fund covers needy thru Saturday"

Ken Kusmer's AP story in the Chicago Tribune today begins:

INDIANAPOLIS — Planned Parenthood of Indiana will tap a fund for low-income patients to keep providing most health care services to current Medicaid recipients at least through Saturday, despite a new state law that cuts most of its public funding, a spokeswoman said.

The organization will be able to afford to provide for those patients by using money from its Women's Health Fund, which helps low-income people with such things as birth control, cancer screens and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, spokeswoman Kate Shepherd said Thursday.

On Wednesday, a federal judge denied Planned Parenthood a temporary order blocking the new state law while the organization pursues a lawsuit. Indiana became the first state to largely end public funding for Planned Parenthood when Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels signed the measure this week.

"We'll re-evaluate if we can afford to continue that later this week," Shepherd said. "We won't be taking new Medicaid patients and some long-term birth control methods won't be covered by us for those patients. But, the majority will be taken care of. It may be a week-by-week decision, based on how donations into the fund for low-income patients goes."'

The fund had about $300,000 as of Wednesday, said Becky Cockrum, president of Planned Parenthood of Indiana.

An editorial yesterday in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette pointed out:
Perhaps the worst part of the new state law banning Planned Parenthood from receiving money to provide health care is its “emergency” status, allowing it to become effective as soon as Gov. Mitch Daniels signed it Tuesday.

Most new laws take effect July 1, giving those affected by the changes time to adapt. But legislators declared an emergency, allowing the Planned Parenthood law to take effect immediately.

What is the emergency?

“This was so important to” legislators, Indiana Solicitor General Thomas Fisher told a federal judge Tuesday. “They wanted to keep the state from going forward with indirect subsidizing of abortion with Medicaid funds.”

Of course, the state has funded non-abortion health care functions of Planned Parenthood for years. And it would have made sense for this law – as bad as it is – to take effect on July 1, when the state’s new fiscal year begins. The only “emergency” requiring the law to take effect immediately was a political power shift that let Republicans do pretty much what they wanted this year.

Ironically, one reason the federal judge denied Planned Parenthood’s request for a temporary restraining order, which would have kept the law from taking effect, is that the state did not have time to respond to the request for the order.

Now, thousands of low-income Hoosiers who depend on Planned Parenthood for a variety of health-care needs will have to find new providers – not in two months, not in two weeks, but now, because of this “emergency.”

From the transcript of Michael Puente's WBEZ 91.5 story yesterday headed "Abortion debate rages in Northwest Indiana":
When the doors opened this morning at a Planned Parenthood office in Gary, patients who showed up were in for shock because a common payment option is no longer available.

But, patients did receive the customary medical documents.

RECEPTIONIST: Go ahead and filled those out for me. Top part there the next one is front and back. And when you’re done please bring those back to me and thank you.

But when this patient returned to the counter, the receptionist provided some new information.

RECEPTIONIST: We may not be able to bill Medicaid but we are going to take care of you. We expect the situation to be resolved quickly but we need to reschedule you if for any reason you didn’t quality for the funding we would have to reschedule you for …

But before the receptionist could explain … the patient … who asked not to be identified … didn’t quite understand what was going on.

RECEPTIONIST: We may not be able to bill Medicaid.

WOMAN: Why is that?

RECEPTIONIST: Governor Mitch Daniels passed a bill. It’s basically saying we can’t get federal funding because Medicaid is federal funding, we can’t accept your Medicaid here today.

WOMAN: What am I supposed to do now? Find somewhere else to go? I don’t understand it. It took me a whole month to get Medicaid in the first place and I can’t use it.

Planned Parenthood office manager Maritza Torres assured the woman that she would be seen today and Planned Parenthood would pay for the service through a special backup fund for low-income people.

But those funds aren’t going to last forever. In fact, they may run out this weekend.

For background, see Ken Kusmer's long AP story from May 12th.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on May 13, 2011 09:39 AM
Posted to Indiana Law