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vincentML -> RE: War on the Poor? (3/16/2017 6:30:07 AM)
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quote:
Do you actually think rural women have good access to PP? They don't. I do not consider the town I am in to be rural, but it would still take about 90 minutes to drive to the nearest PP. For a pap smear, an abortion, or std testing. And they charge for those or bill your insurance. Now, if I lived in a rural area, the drive would be longer. For less care than I can get at a doctor's office. Now, the county health department that offers all the same services EXCEPT abortion, has a free program for those who income qualify, and is not that far away. Even when I was living at the edge of the county, I would not have had to drive an hour and a half. So, no, I do not buy the premise that PP is necessary for women's health reasons.
You make a good point, Aylee. I live in a county that is over 1300 square miles in area. People have serious travel handicaps if they are without a car.
But 'live and learn' for me. Here is more about the issue:
The numbers alone are close to accurate. There are about 650 Planned Parenthood health centers. There are more than 9,800 health center delivery sites in the federal Health Center Program and about 4,100 in the Rural Health Clinic program. Under these programs, outpatient primary care clinics get reimbursed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for helping medically underserved populations.
But there are technical differences, especially with rural health clinics.
Ryan uses the term “federal community health centers,” which is used interchangeably with federally qualified health centers in the political debate over Planned Parenthood funding. Medicaid is a major source of revenue for both Planned Parenthood clinics and federally qualified health centers. So legislation to “defund” Planned Parenthood focuses on pulling Medicaid funding and other federal grants from Planned Parenthood and redirecting them to federally qualified health centers.
Planned Parenthood primarily serves low-income patients, according to its data. Of about 2.5 million patients it reportedly served in 2015, 75 percent had income at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level.
Federally qualified health centers are required to provide care to everyone, regardless of whether they can pay, and offer sliding-scale fees based on the patient’s ability to pay. These health centers serve a larger and more diverse patient population than Planned Parenthood because they offer more comprehensive services (primary, dental, behavioral health).
Both Planned Parenthood and federally qualified health centers provide family planning services. But federally qualified health centers, in total and individually, provide fewer contraceptive services than Planned Parenthood, according to the Congressional Research Service. In 2014, the health centers in total provided 1.3 million contraceptive services and Planned Parenthood clinics provided 3.6 million.
As Ryan says, federally qualified health centers and rural health clinics do provide the types of women’s health services (other than abortions) that Planned Parenthood does: STD/STI testing and treatment, contraception, cancer screening and prevention, and other services, such as pregnancy tests and prenatal services.
But rural health clinics are not required to provide services to low-income patients and aren’t required to offer a sliding-fee scale. And they’re not required to offer family planning services.
“While many RHCs [rural health clinics] have a sliding fee scale and see patients regardless of financial implications, some RHCs would not see patients if the patient was uninsured or low income due to financial constraints,” said Nathan Baugh, government affairs director for the National Association of Rural Health Clinics.
Baugh added that some rural health clinics “might not be able to absorb those Planned Parenthood patients if they do not have access to the grant money” that is appropriated for federally qualified health centers.
COMPLETE ARTICLE
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