Judge orders Trump administration to continue Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood | Planned Parenthood
The Trump administration must continue to reimburse the Planned Parenthood clinics for services funded by Medicaid, a federal judge ruled on Monday, in a legal escalation between the breeding health giant and the White House for republican efforts to “finance” Planned Parenthood.
A few days after Donald Trump signed his radical tax bill, Planned Parenthood continued a provision of the invoice that ended Medicaid payments for one year to abortion suppliers who received more than $ 800,000 in Medicaid in 2023, as Planned Parenthood. The new order of the court, of the American district judge Indira Talwani in Boston, will protect the funding of Medicaid for all the Planned Parenthood clinics while the dispute in the case continues.
The order replaces and also expands a previous edict transmitted by Talwani, which initially granted a preliminary injunction which specifically prevents the government from reducing Medicaid payments only to the affiliates of Planned Parenthood which did not provide an abortion or did not receive at least $ 800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements during a given year.
“Patients are likely to undergo harmful consequences on health where care is disrupted or unavailable,” wrote Talwani in his order on Monday.
“In particular, the restriction of the capacity of members to provide health services threatens an increase in unwanted pregnancies and complications which result from it due to reduced access to effective contraceptives and an increase in IST not diagnosed and not treated.”
More than 80 million people count on Medicaid, the US government insurance program for low -income people.
It is already illegal to use Medicaid to pay most of the abortions, but the Planned Parenthood clinics – which treat a disproportionate number of people who use Medicaid – count on the program to reimburse it for services such as birth contracts, STI tests and cancer screening.
In his trial, Planned Parenthood had argued that he could close nearly 200 clinics in 24 states if it was cut off from Medicaid funds. These closures would probably be felt most strongly in the blue states, because they house a greater number of people who use Medicaid. An affiliate of Planned Parenthood in California has already been forced to close five clinics following the “funding” provision.
Planned Parenthood estimated that, in all, more than a million patients could lose care.
“We will continue to combat this cruel law so that everyone can obtain a control of births, tests and IST treatments, cancer screening and other essential health care, whatever their insurance,” said Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Alexis McGill Johnson, in a statement after the decision on Monday.
Planned Parenthood is fighting against overwhelming political and economic winds. Even if he prevails against the Trump administration, his affiliates could always be withdrawn from Medicaid in the red states, thanks to a June decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in favor of South Carolina in a case involving the state’s attempt to launch Planned Parenthood out of its Medicaid program.
On Monday, the state of the Missouri also continued the Parenthood Federation of America planned – the organization of mothers who tricolis together the regional affiliation network of Planned Parenthood – on the accusations according to which the organization minimized the medical risks of a common abortion pill, Miffepristone, “to reduce costs and increase income”. The trial, which requests more than $ 1 million in damages, is part of an ongoing campaign by anti-abortion activists to cut access to mifepristone.
More than 100 studies, carried out in dozens of countries and more than three decades, have concluded that mifepristone is a sure way to end a pregnancy.
The Associated Press contributed the reports
