CA gives Planned Parenthood $140 million to keep clinics open

By Kristen Hwang, CalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

After months of financial strain, Planned Parenthood will get a $140 million lifeline to offset losses it sustained after Congress in July cut funding for the health system, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday.

The money will help Planned Parenthood keep 109 California clinics open. In a statement, Newsom said the move reflects the state’s continued commitment to abortion and reproductive health care.

“Trump’s efforts to defund Planned Parenthood put all our communities at risk as people seek basic health care from these community providers,” Newsom said.

Lawmakers will also take up the issue in January when the Legislature reconvenes.

The news comes a week after the nonprofit organization announced it would eliminate primary care at clinics in Orange and San Bernardino counties. Five other clinics also closed in July in the Bay Area, Santa Cruz and Central Valley, all in response to federal defunding.

Planned Parenthood needs roughly $27 million monthly to operate all of its local facilities, according to Jodi Hicks, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, the organization’s statewide advocacy group.

“We’re incredibly grateful that we’ve found a way to get some funding out to our Planned Parenthood health centers so they can remain operating and continue services,” Hicks said. 

California is the fourth state, following Washington, Colorado and New Mexico, to pledge public funds to keep Planned Parenthood afloat. Lawmakers in Oregon and New York are also considering similar moves.

Republicans have lambasted and targeted Planned Parenthood for decades over contraceptive and abortion services. A 1977 law banned federal funding for abortions, but this summer President Donald Trump took additional steps to cut down the nation’s largest abortion provider.

His sweeping tax and budget bill prohibited Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid dollars for any kinds of services, including mammograms, pap smears, birth control and sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment.

According to Planned Parenthood, abortions account for less than 10% of its services, while other reproductive health services make up the bulk of medical care provided.

Federal funding losses have forced Planned Parenthood to close clinics across the country, where half of all patients rely on Medicaid. In California, where 80% of Planned Parenthood patients have Medicaid – known as Medi-Cal in the state – the losses are even greater.

“There was definitely an outsized impact on California,” Hicks said.

Primary care closures ripple across the state

Democratic lawmakers, Newsom and Planned Parenthood have spent most of the year searching for a funding solution that protects reproductive health access without cash from federal coffers. But, faced with a multibillion-dollar state deficit, solutions have been slow to appear and challenging to maintain.

“We’ll fight like hell to maintain access to care in the coming months and years,” said Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, a Davis Democrat who leads the Legislative Women’s Caucus,

Even with the state’s pledge to protect sexual and reproductive health care, Planned Parenthood clinics face growing uncertainty driven by federal grant freezes, lawsuits and even some proposed state cuts.

Last week, Planned Parenthood in Orange and San Bernardino counties announced facilities would close primary care services on Dec. 13. The group, which runs nine health centers, added primary care more than a decade ago to serve low-income patients unable to find appointments elsewhere. 

Dr. Janet Jacobson, medical director of the Orange and San Bernardino counties clinics, said the federal actions are “destroying our primary care program.” She said she worries patients with urgent mental health needs or chronic conditions won’t be able to quickly find another provider. Many communities in the region have too few doctors, according to state data.

Roughly 13,000 patients will lose access to care and Planned Parenthood will lay off 77 staff.

“It’s inhumane to take away people’s health care,” Jacobson said. “Folks that have Medi-Cal should be able to see the provider of their choice for primary care.”

Aguiar-Curry called the loss of primary care “unacceptable and dangerous.” 

Seeking stability as ‘financial cliff’ still looms

Farther north, Planned Parenthood Mar Monte — which runs 30 health centers along the California coast, Central Valley and Nevada — closed five health centers in July shortly after Trump blocked Planned Parenthood’s funding.

Mar Monte Chief of Staff Andrew Adams said the organization has been working to maintain its financial stability. The closures helped preserve services at the organization’s other clinics until the end of the year, but Adams warned that it could hit a “financial cliff” in January. 

“We are planning for an environment where there is no federal funding,” Adams said. “What that looks like is having to potentially charge patients some amount of money for services we provide.”

Other Planned Parenthood groups in the state are exploring ways to cut costs and boost revenue while keeping clinics open for patients.

Dr. Neda Ashtari, a former Planned Parenthood and Medi-Cal patient, emphasized the importance of ensuring more than 1 million patients continue to have access to cancer screenings and other reproductive health services. When Ashtari was a teenager, her mother died of breast cancer after missing routine scans that could have detected the cancer earlier, she said.

“It really crystallizes that this preventative care is the difference between life or death,” Ashtari said.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.