Stop @HHSGov's coordination with a designated hate group, deploy all our communities to protect our rights, start by reading https://t.co/64Dn8HDAJF then take action with us, our allies @PPact @emilslist https://t.co/FBI6ayAxiv

— AAAFund (@AAAFund) February 23, 2018

We’re upset to read about our friends Planned Parenthood Federation of America who released “HHS Whistleblower Reveals HHS Secretly Working with Hate Group to Target Planned Parenthood“.

PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, February 12, 2018

CONTACT: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Media Office; 212-261-4433; media.office@ppfa.org

Planned Parenthood Statement: HHS Whistleblower Reveals HHS Secretly Working with Hate Group to Target Planned Parenthood

Washington, DC — As reported in Politico today, a just released letter from Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, shows that Trump-Pence’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been secretly coordinating with a designated hate group to develop policy to deny women and others access to health care. The congressional oversight letter, sent to Eric D. Hargan, the Deputy Secretary for HHS, cites an HHS whistleblower raising “serious concerns” about HHS “taking orders” from Alliance Defending Freedom, an organization that has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

As the congressional oversight letter states, “the documents raise grave questions about the legitimacy of the Trump Administration’s letter to state Medicaid directors on January 19.”

The congressional oversight letter goes on to say that Alliance Defending Freedom was “behind an effort by the Trump Administration on January 19, 2018, to help states terminate Planned Parenthood as a healthcare provider for Medicaid beneficiaries seeking to exercise their statutory rights to obtain family planning or other health care services.”

Shortly after the January 19 Medicaid letter was released, six prominent provider organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American College of Physicians, and the American Academy of Family Physicians, who represent more than 560,000 physicians and medical students, issued a joint statement denouncing the Medicaid letter.

Statement from Dawn Laguens, Executive Vice President, Planned Parenthood Federation of America:  

“This is shocking and outrageous. The Trump-Pence administration has been secretly coordinating with, and in some instances taking orders from, a designated hate group in order to try to block people from coming to Planned Parenthood for health care.

“The Alliance Defending Freedom has spent decades trying to take away women’s access to health care and ability to control their own bodies and lives. The Trump-Pence administration has embraced this group’s philosophy and handed them the pen to make official U.S. government policy.

“If there was ever any doubt, it’s now clear that the Trump-Pence administration’s actions to try to block women from accessing preventive care at Planned Parenthood health centers are not only politically motivated, but being driven by extreme organizations, including designated hate groups.

“The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) should immediately rescind the politically tainted January 19 Medicaid letter. CMS should also cease any and all politically motivated attacks on health care.”

BACKGROUND: Key Passages from the Congressional Oversight and Investigations letter:

Pages 5-6:

• “A whistleblower has now provided us with information and documents indicating that a right-wing advocacy group known as Alliance Defending Freedom was behind the Trump Administration’s recent effort to rescind the 2016 letter and to seek to eliminate protections for Medicaid beneficiaries who exercise their rights to seek family planning or other health care services.
• “According to the information provided by the whistleblower, on the morning of January 11, 2018, several high-level Trump Administration political appointees at HHS and CMS discussed a draft letter they would soon be receiving from an undisclosed source that would rescind the 2016 letter.
• “Directly after this discussion, at 10:07 a.m., your Chief of Staff, Kristin Skrzycki, sent an email to Brady Brookes, the Deputy Chief of Staff at CMS, explaining that processing this letter was an urgent priority:

o After conversations with Paula and Kelly this morning, CMS should be receiving the SMD [State Medicaid Director] letter today. Per our discussion yesterday, please make sure your clearance process is ready to go on this. We will need a very quick turnaround. Consider an utmost priority.

• “Later that same day, at 2:22 p.m., HHS Deputy General Counsel Kelly Cleary sent an email attaching the draft letter from the undisclosed source. Now that we have obtained a copy of that draft letter, it appears to have originated from Alliance Defending Freedom. The metadata for the draft letter identifies Casey Mattox as the author and Alliance Defending Freedom as the company that created the document….
• “Within one minute of receiving the draft letter, Brady Brookes, the Deputy Chief of Staff at CMS, forwarded it on to additional political appointees within CMS.
• “On January 19, 2018, only eight days after the draft letter was first received, the final CMS letter was sent to state Medicaid directors. The final letter cut down the length of the first draft significantly and removed nearly all of the rhetoric explaining the true purpose behind allowing states to terminate unwanted providers. However, it achieved the same result—it rescinded the 2016 letter to try to limit protections for Medicaid beneficiaries seeking access to family planning services.”

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND:

The law is clear: It is illegal to bar people from seeking care at Planned Parenthood. Longstanding protections within Medicaid safeguard every person’s right to access family planning care at the qualified provider of their choice. The freedom of choice provision is federal law and cannot be changed by guidance.

Not only is blocking care at Planned Parenthood dangerous and illegal, it’s unpopular — which is why it failed in Congress six times. Poll after poll shows that the American people overwhelmingly support Planned Parenthood and strongly oppose these attacks on their health care.

The idea that other providers could absorb Planned Parenthood’s patients has been resoundingly dismissed by experts. In fact, the executive director of the American Public Health Association called the idea “ludicrous.” Planned Parenthood health centers care for 2.4 million people nationwide each year, and more than half of Planned Parenthood health centers are in rural or medically underserved areas. Two years after Texas barred care at Planned Parenthood, nearly 30,000 fewer women received birth control, cancer screenings, and other care through the state’s family planning program as a result.

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President’s FY19 Budget Released. Earlier today, the Trump-Pence administration released its FY2019 budget, as well as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)budget-in-brief. While the budget is unlikely to be taken up by Congress, it is a strong indicator of the administration’s priorities and continued focus on cutting off access to Planned Parenthood health centers, undermining access to sexual and reproductive health care, and dismantling the social safety net, including essential health care programs like Medicaid. Indeed, the budget serves as a roadmap for the types of regulatory action we could see from the Trump-Pence administration this year.

Like last year, the budget proposes to eliminate all HHS funding for Planned Parenthood health centers. Moreover, as expected, the budget includes proposed significant cuts to domestic funding for health care and other safety net programs. While some of the proposals in the budget would require congressional action (such as block granting Medicaid and other deep funding cuts to certain safety net programs), the administration can work to impose its agenda through harmful implementation policies. For instance, the administration is clearly attempting to undermine the Medicaid program by working directly with states to eliminate longstanding protections for beneficiaries (e.g. by imposing new Medicaid eligibility and enrollment restrictions). See below for additional highlights of the FY19 budget plan; we will continue to provide additional analysis as we learn more. Planned Parenthood’s press statement is available here.

Some key highlights in the FY19 budget plan:

• Proposes to block Planned Parenthood from participating in all HHS programs, including Title X and Medicaid;
• Proposes to continue funding for the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP), while eliminating the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program and sustaining abstinence-only-until-marriage funding;
• Proposes level funding for Title X but prevents Title X patients from accessing care from Planned Parenthood health centers (which currently serve 40% of Title X patients);
• Places a new ban on abortion access for immigrants in ICE detention facilities, and proposes to block implementation of D.C.’s Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Amendment Act;
• Doubles down on policies allowing health care workers to deny information and care to women and LGBTQ people;
• Proposes passage of the Graham-Cassidy bill, which would have dismantled the ACA, eliminated Medicaid expansion, and radically restructured Medicaid through block granting and per-capita caps;
• Proposes to cut international family planning by more than 50 percent, while emphasizing fertility awareness methods over other, more effective forms of birth control.

To recap, the story in Politico is that a whistleblower revealed HHS’s secretly plotting with a hate group to block women’s access to healthcare from Planned Parenthood. The source is a letter from Rep. Elijah E. Cummings on the whistleblower. Our mission is to empower AAPI and this move directly targets our community especially its most vulnerable in the deplorable effort to maximize deplorable interests at any cost. Defunding women’s healthcare is outrageous and irresponsible. Apart from the poor ethnics of secretly coordinating (this administration has no care for poor ethnics, a traditional problem) with a designated hate group to block people from coming to Planned Parenthood for healthcare. Alliance Defending Freedom, that hate group, was designated as such by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Our goal is to empower the AAPI community, and the Trump administration’s actions as described here targets the most vulnerable in our community.  Alliance Defending Freedom has spent decades trying to take away women’s access to health care as well as their ability to control their own bodies and lives. It is deplorable that the Trump-Pence administration embraced this group’s philosophy, and handed them the pen to make official U.S. government policy. We must join forces and fight back.