LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A federal appeals court panel has ruled that Arkansas can block Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood over videos secretly recorded by an anti-abortion group.
A 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel on Wednesday vacated preliminary injunctions a federal judge issued preventing the state from suspending any Medicaid payments for patients who receive services from Planned Parenthood. Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson ended the state’s Medicaid contract with the organization in 2015 over the videos.
A federal judge initially ordered the state to continue the payments to three patients who had sued over the move and later expanded that order to anyone who seeks or wants to obtain services from the organization’s health centers in Arkansas.
GOP: “No, No. We think Nazis and white supremacists are bad, but evangelical supremacists are ay-okay. And if you think we’re giving up the opportunity to fuck “other” people over, think again.”
AP can’t even be bothered to mention the videos were found to have been deceptively edited.
What?!? Am I misreading that? It sounds like a direct assault on Medicaid patients, use Planned Parenthood once and you are ineligible for all Medicaid payments. In other words, you lose all benefits.
I keep thinking, no it can’t be that bad, and it always turns out worse than I thought.
You’re not misreading - but it’s bad writing and misleading. I just read a longer, newer AP article that says it’s the payments from Medicaid to PP for services rendered.
Not to minimize this for the affected people, but the dissent on the panel notes that this decision goes against other court findings on this. I have no idea what the next step is - full panel? But it’s not the last word, it’s not even the current word on the issue outside of this jurisdiction.
Dude that circuit court is stacked with judges from Trump’s short list to the SCOTUS. Some of the esteemed members of this court are: Raymond Gruender (who rules against Planned Parenthood, saying that all women seeking an abortion should know that they are destroying a “life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.” and ruled against segregation monitoring in Little Rock, because he believed that the metrics used were subjective (uh, so is your opinion, dude)), and Steven Colloton. This is a very conservative circuit court, and I am sure this will be appealed.