Healthcare

The High Cost of the War on Women

This illustrates the shortsightedness of knee-jerk Republican attempts to defund family planning services perhaps better than anything.

From The New York Times

When state lawmakers passed a two-year budget in 2011 that moved $73 million from family planning services to other programs, the goal was largely political: halt the flow of taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood clinics. [...]

The latest Health and Human Services Commission projections being circulated among Texas lawmakers indicate that during the 2014-15 biennium, poor women will deliver an estimated 23,760 more babies than they would have, as a result of their reduced access to state-subsidized birth control. The additional cost to taxpayers is expected to be as much as $273 million — $103 million to $108 million to the state’s general revenue budget alone — and the bulk of it is the cost of caring for those infants under Medicaid.

Texas cut $73 million from family planning services, but the resulting increase in unwanted pregnancy and unplanned parenthood will cost the state as much as $273 million, bringing the net cost of assailing the state's family support groups to $200 million.

Are they getting their money's worth? Politically, do the ends justify the means?

With Texas refusing to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, the state cannot afford this kind of unnecessary cost.