A Texas Public Radio spot titled “In Texas, People With Fluctuating Incomes Risk Being Cut Off From Medicaid” featured observations by GW Health Policy and Management Professors Sara Rosenbaum and Leighton Ku about a Texas Medicaid family planning demonstration proposal. An analysis carried out by Rosenbaum and researchers from the GW Health Policy and Management Department’s Geiger Gibson Program in Community Health Policy that would tie coverage to an exclusion of Planned Parenthood would severely constrain access for covered women, thereby defeating, rather than advancing, Medicaid’s core objectives.
"I just find it amazing that a state that says that it needs to have ... new flexibility to innovate is engaged in something this harmful and burdensome," Rosenbaum said.
"There are some states we think would run very good Medicaid programs with more flexibility. And there are other cases where, if you have a little more flexibility, they do not-good things," Ku observed.
(Read more)