States slash birth control subsidies as federal debate rages
Fri Mar 2, 2012 5:28pm EST
* Biggest impact being felt in Texas
* Lawmakers say they have no choice
* Cuts could cost more than save - study
By Stephanie Simon
March 2 (Reuters) - Even as a national debate rages over contraception insurance, tens of thousands of low-income women and teenagers across the United States have lost access to subsidized birth control as states slash and restructure family planning funds.
Montana and New Jersey have eliminated altogether their state family planning programs. New Hampshire cut its funding by 57 percent and five other states made more modest program trims.
But the biggest impact, by far, has been in Texas.
State lawmakers last fall cut family-planning funds by two-thirds, or nearly $74 million over two years. Within months, half the state-supported family planning clinics in Texas had closed.
The state network, which once provided 220,000 women a year free and low-cost birth control, cervical cancer tests and diabetes screenings, will now serve just 40,000 to 60,000, officials said.
more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/02/usa-contraception-subsidies-idUSL2E8E21C920120302
Statement on Federal Threats to Texas' Women's Health Program
By Texas Public Policy Foundation
AUSTIN, Texas, March 1, 2012 — Statement by The Honorable Arlene Wohlgemuth, Executive Director and Director of TPPF's Center for Health Care Policy:
AUSTIN, Texas, March 1, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- "The federal government's proposed denial of Medicaid funds to the Texas Women's Health Program threatens state sovereignty and the rule of law. Nothing in the federal Medicaid statutes prevents states from imposing their own requirements for qualified providers in addition to federal requirements. Indeed, the courts have long recognized this.
"Despite decades of precedent, the federal government has now discovered a new requirement limiting the ability of Texas to choose which providers qualify for its own program. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' threat is an abuse of its grant-making authority – and a violation of the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
"The federal government shouldn't be able to dictate state policy to our elected representatives, especially when the people of Texas have clearly spoken. It is the duty of state government to represent the desires of its state's citizens. The constitution guarantees the states a republican form of government. This federal interference negates that guarantee, and infringes on the representative government of the states.
Read more here: http://www.bradenton.com/2012/03/01/3910730/statement-on-federal-threats-to.html#storylink=cpy
= new reply since forum marked as read
and more spent on welfare...higher abortion rates.
Good lord, the stoopid is seriously starting to hurt my brain. 