DeLauro, Lowey Urge Congress to Restore and Strengthen Medicaid Coverage of Family Planning Services

DeLauro, Lowey Urge Congress to Restore and Strengthen Medicaid Coverage of Family Planning Services

- Recently-passed legislation allows states to retreat from 30 years of programs -

- U.S. Representatives Rosa L. DeLauro (Conn.-3) and Nita Lowey (NY-18) today introduced legislation to restore and strengthen Medicaid coverage of family planning services. The federal government has required state Medicaid programs to cover family planning services for low-income women since 1972. Yet the recently enacted Deficit Reduction Act gives states significant new latitude to reshape their Medicaid programs, greatly reducing family planning services for women that need them the most.

"Expanding eligibility of family planning services to low-income women will maximize cost-savings to both federal and state governments, reduce the disparities in access to family planning services for low-income women, and decrease the incidence of abortion in the U.S.," said DeLauro. "Congress must not retreat from 30 years of services for low-income women."

"For millions of women and families, Medicaid makes access to basic health care services possible, including essential care like family planning services," said Lowey. "Expanding access to contraception should be a shared national goal. Family planning helps reduce unintended pregnancies and abortion - it's as simple as that. Congresswoman DeLauro and I hope our bill will help women better plan their pregnancies and provide basic healthcare to women who wouldn't otherwise receive it."

According to the Guttmacher Institute, nearly 12 percent of all women of reproductive age rely on Medicaid for their health care, and the program provides just over six in 10 public health dollars spent on family planning. A recent report by the Institute, Abortion in Women's Lives, found that low-income women in America are four times as likely to have an unintended pregnancy, five times as likely to have an unintended birth and more than four times as likely to have an abortion compared with higher-income women.

If states are allowed to offer certain enrollees stripped-down benefit packages that fail to include family planning services, existing disparities in access to contraception will likely increase. In fact, some states' track records show that they may stop covering family planning under Medicaid in their benchmark plans. When states were granted the same option to design their benefit packages for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), four states (Montana, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Texas) chose packages that do not include coverage of contraceptives. Three other states (Alaska, North Dakota, and Wyoming) do not cover family planning in their state employee health plan and would likely not cover them under Medicaid.

DeLauro and Lowey introduced "The Unintended Pregnancy Reduction Act of 2006," legislation that will amend the Medicaid statute to require states to extend coverage for family planning services and supplies to women who would be entitled to Medicaid-funded prenatal, labor, delivery, and postpartum care if they become pregnant.

http://www.house.gov/delauro/press/2006/July/medicaid_family_planning_7_13_06.html