From the Trib – “Planning Families – Unwanted pregnancies are costly”
Planning families
Unwanted pregnancies are costly
Tribune Editorial
Updated: 01/20/2010 12:19:53 AM MST
Family planning information and birth control could help low-income women avoid unplanned pregnancies that too often lead to more children in poverty, more abortions, further financial and marital stress for families and more babies who start life unhealthy, unwanted and underprivileged.
Those are good reasons to extend Medicaid family-planning services to Utah's poorest women beyond the 60 days following a birth that is all the current system provides. Another is the cost of failing to help low-income women avoid the pregnancies they can't afford.
The Utah Department of Health reports that 33 percent of all pregnancies in the state are unplanned, but for those with annual incomes of less than $15,000, the percentage is a staggering 51.2 percent. And Medicaid, the government health provider for the poor, pays for nearly a third of all births in the state at an average cost of $5,155. Family-planning services, on the other hand, cost only about $28 a month.
Rep. Jen Seelig, D-Salt Lake City, says she will sponsor legislation in the upcoming session of the Utah Legislature to extend family planning services, including birth control, to two years following childbirth for women on Medicaid. The federal government would pay 90 percent of the cost. The bill may include a provision to extend the service to all families with annual incomes up to 185 percent of the federal poverty level.
The legislation, supported by Voices for Utah Children,the Utah Health Policy Project, Planned Parenthood and the March of Dimes, only makes good sense. The child-advocacy groups cite statistics from the state Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System that show babies born as a result of unplanned pregnancies are more likely to be unhealthy at birth, more often are below-normal birth weight and have to be cared for in costly intensive-care hospital units.
Another obvious target should be a 15-year-old consent law that prohibits minors from getting contraceptives from any state-supported agency without parental permission, despite the fact that minors have the highest rate of unplanned pregnancies. This law keeps Utah from getting funding under the Title X program. That federal program provides access to contraceptive services, supplies and information and gives priority to people from low-income families. A federal Web site estimates that in 75 percent of U.S. counties, there is at least one clinic that receives Title X funds.
About 98 percent of private insurers cover family planning. Women on Medicaid have the same needs and should be covered, too.
