Reporters digging through the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Senate health coverage bill written by Tom Cotton and 12 other white men have found that the obscured provision to strip funding of Planned Parenthood would cost money.
It’s simple: By taking away support for Planned Parenthood’s family planning (contraception) services, more children will be born at Medicaid’s expense. More unwanted pregnancies also could encourage abortion, the very service which has Republicans in Congress on a tear. But Planned Parenthood is not just about abortion. Writes Vox:
The impact here would be huge. Three-quarters of the public dollars spent on family planning in this country are Medicaid dollars. And right now about 2.5 million people rely on Planned Parenthood for a range of health care services, like birth control and cancer screenings.
Defunding Planned Parenthood will leave thousands of people, particularly low-income people, without access to these health care services — and would also result in more unintended pregnancies, CBO said (emphasis added):
To the extent that access to care would be reduced under this legislation, services that help women avoid becoming pregnant would be affected. The people most likely to experience reduced access to care would probably reside in areas without other health care clinics or medical practitioners who serve low-income populations. CBO projects that about 15 percent of those people would lose access to care.
No wonder Tom Cotton is hiding from questions about this legislation.