Obama's campaign charging ahead Obama volunteer Linda Koch writes down the name of a new volunteer at the campaign office in Warren, Mich. With eight months until election day, his reelection campaign has spent months and tens of millions of dollars building an organization earlier and larger than any previous presidential campaign. March 16, 2012 http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-organize-20120317,0,6253636.story [with comments]
Perry Continues Assault on Women's Health Care Perry ends the WHP and blames it on the feds March 16, 2012 As the Chronicle went to press Tuesday evening (a day early) this week, the Texas Women's Health Program was set to expire Wednesday, March 14, when the state's new rule on qualified affiliate providers officially takes effect. Barring some miracle – or the immediate fulfillment of Gov. Rick Perry's last-minute promise to somehow keep the program running – health care for hundreds of thousands of low-income, working-class, and uninsured Texas women has been ended. Perry insists he wants to continue the WHP – but he doesn't want Texas women who participate in the preventative health care program to choose their own providers. Instead, in a pair of letters sent to President Barack Obama and to Texas Health and Human Services Commissioner Tom Suehs, Perry said the program will include only state-approved providers and clinics. To do otherwise, he wrote, would offend Texas' 10th Amendment sovereignty. As Perry sees it, the U.S. Constitution grants Texas the power both to discriminate among medical providers and to micromanage the lives of hundreds of thousands of Texas women. Perry's letters are the latest chapter in the dismal saga of Texas' official position on women's health care and on the future of the heretofore very successful WHP. After signing off last year on lawmakers' gutting of the state budget that in 2011 provided preventative health care and family planning to roughly 214,000 women, Perry now says he intends to ask lawmakers to find enough money to continue the WHP – but without the 90% match from the federal government that made the roughly $35 million yearly cost of the program a financial boon for the state. [...] http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2012-03-16/perry-continues-assault-on-womens-health-care/ [with comments]
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U.S. Calls Bluff in Texas Medicaid/Planned Parenthood Standoff March 16, 2012 The federal government told Texas late on Thursday that it would be dropping the state from the Medicaid Women’s Health Program. Until now, federal Medicaid dollars had paid for 90 percent of the costs to help poor Texas women get gynecological exams, cancer screenings, and contraception. Federal Medicaid Director Cindy Mann said Texas will be dropped because Gov. Rick Perry insisted on rules that excluded Planned Parenthood from the program. “I just want to again underscore how disappointed we are in having to take this action,” Mann said. “We don’t have a choice,” she added. “Medicaid law is clear: Patients — not the state government or officials — are able to choose the doctor and health care providers that are best for them and their families.” [...] http://www.nationaljournal.com/healthcare/u-s-calls-bluff-in-texas-medicaid-planned-parenthood-standoff-20120316 [no comments yet]
Texas sues federal agency over Women's Health Program
By Benjamin Wermund AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Updated: 10:52 p.m. Friday, March 16, 2012 Published: 10:40 p.m. Friday, March 16, 2012
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a lawsuit on Friday against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services's secretary, a day after federal officials told the state to begin phasing out a Medicaid program in Texas that provides health care for thousands of low-income women.
The lawsuit — Abbott's second move against the federal government this week — claims the federal decision to defund the Women's Health Program is illegal and violates the U.S. Constitution.
The Medicaid program funded primarily by the federal government provides Pap smears, breast exams, birth control and other services to more than 100,000 low-income, uninsured women between the ages of 18 and 44.
A state law passed this summer that would bar the program from paying for care at clinics affiliated with abortion providers took effect Wednesday, prompting the federal decision to cut funding.
The law is an attempt to stop women from seeking taxpayer-funded care at Planned Parenthood, even though participating clinics are legally separated from those that provide abortions, and tax dollars cannot be used to pay for abortions. Federal law says women should be able to select their own caregivers.
The lawsuit argues that the federal government is "seeking to commandeer and coerce the states' lawmaking processes" by forcing the state into giving taxpayer money to elective abortion providers.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry applauded the lawsuit — filed in Waco — in a statement Friday while also chiding the "Obama administration's decision to deny health care" to low-income women.
In his statement, Perry said Texas will fund the services for which the federal government is scheduled to pay $30 million this year, with the state contributing $3.3 million.
"This is about life and the rule of law, which Texas respects and the Obama administration does not," the statement said. "I applaud Attorney General Greg Abbott's swift action to defend our state's laws and our ability to carry out the will of Texans."
The attorney general's office declined to comment, and representatives for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not return emails or calls Friday.
F. Scott McCown, a former state district judge who is the executive director of the Center for Public Policy Priority, a liberal think tank, said the lawsuit doesn't hold water, and he cited similar lawsuits filed in other states that have failed.
Judges in Indiana and Kansas have halted attempts by state legislators to bar Planned Parenthood from earning Medicaid funds. A judge in North Carolina blocked an effort by the state's legislature to keep state and federal funds for non-abortion services from Planned Parenthood.
McCown said federal officials are acting on an existing Medicaid policy that says women have a right to choose their own provider.
"This is not some new Obama administration rule or policy," McCown said. "This is long-standing Medicaid law that's been enforced by Republicans and Democrats."
McCown said the state law violates the U.S. Constitution by barring a licensed group from performing services because of its affiliation with another group that exercises "constitutionally protected rights" of abortion.
"That's just chilling," McCown said, adding that Abbott is "a big one for freedom and liberty and the constitution, and here he's saying we can exclude a person solely because they hang out with someone whose views don't agree with our own. It's like saying, if you're a Methodist, you can't be in this program."
Texas Democratic Party spokeswoman Rebecca Acuna called the lawsuit a political game of chicken.
"This is absolutely just a political statement," Acuna said. "Unfortunately this isn't just a comment — this is now wasting taxpayer dollars to make a political statement."
On Wednesday, Abbott made a direct constitutional challenge to a piece of the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965 that requires Texas and other states that have histories of discrimination to "pre-clear" any changes to election laws. The U.S Justice Department recently denied pre-clearance of Texas' controversial voter ID law.
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