Supreme Court Rules States Can Block Medicaid Patients From Accessing Planned Parenthood

[Wicked Blue]

Source: HuffPost

The Supreme Court effectively ruled on Thursday morning that South Carolina can exclude Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs because the national health care organization also offers abortion care. The decision will deny hundreds of thousands of low-income patients their only health care option and paves a path for other states to do the same.

It’s the high court’s first ruling on abortion since the return of President Donald Trump, whose administration in February joined the case alongside South Carolina. The decision is a win for the Trump administration, which has made it a priority to actualize the GOP’s long-held goal of defunding Planned Parenthood.

The 6-3 ruling in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic focused on the technical question of whether Medicaid-covered patients could sue in order to claim the right to use Planned Parenthood as a health care provider. Federal Medicaid rules allow patients to access care from any provider who is both qualified to provide the care and willing to provide the care, a provision known as “free choice of provider.”

Now, the court has ruled, South Carolina’s Medicaid recipients do not have the right to sue a state if it terminates their chosen provider from the Medicaid program for reasons unrelated to competence, opening the door for providers to be barred from the program for political reasons.


Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/supreme-court-rules-that-states-can-block-medicaid-patients-from-accessing-planned-parenthood_n_6841a12ae4b00b2e94c614d7