Planned Parenthood Keystone, which encompasses seven health centers in central and eastern Pennsylvania, will no longer provide birth control and a range of other services to Medicaid patients, the organization announced.
The regional organization includes the Dr. Daniel D. Wert Health Center at Lancaster at 902 Manor St. in Lancaster city. Other services the organization will no longer make available to Medicaid patients include cancer screenings, wellness exams and sexually transmitted infection testing. The Lancaster site had not been providing these services since last year, when the clinic had to reduce operating hours due to staffing shortages, Kate McKee, marketing and communications director for Planned Parenthood Keystone, said.
The drop in services to Medicaid patients is a result of a “defund” provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law President Donald Trump in July. The measure includes a clause that Medicaid patients cannot use their insurance to receive care from Planned Parenthood. Additionally, Pennsylvania law prohibits health care providers who accept Medicaid from charging Medicaid patients out-of-pocket expenses for services covered by Planned Parenthood.
“This is what defunding looks like. It’s devastating. This is the inevitable consequence of the Trump Administration and its backers in Congress blocking Medicaid patients from choosing Planned Parenthood for their care,” said Melissa Reed, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Keystone.
Planned Parenthood Keystone, including the Lancaster center, will continue to provide abortion services to Medicaid patients, because Medicaid typically does not cover abortion, except in the instances of rape, incest or life endangerment, McKee said.
“We have not had any Medicaid patients who have qualified for coverage of their abortion through those exceptions,” McKee said. “If we were to encounter such a case, patient safety would remain our top priority. Our clinical team would work with the patient to determine the most appropriate path for care based on the particular circumstances of the case.”
Today, the Lancaster clinic offers medication abortions. If a patient requires an abortion procedure, the Lancaster center refers them to another site, McKee said.
The Lancaster center plans to start offering the services it cut last year again in July to patients who pay with private insurance or who are uninsured. In addition to staffing challenges, limitations of the federal Title X program required the center to provide abortion services and family planning services separately, thus the organization decided to focus on abortion due to the shortage of abortion providers in the area, McKee said. Now that it is no longer participating in Title X, the requirements will not apply.
From September to February, Planned Parenthood Keystone continued to offer family planning and preventative services to Medicaid patients in locations other than Lancaster without receiving reimbursement. However, since the funding cut, 51 Planned Parenthood centers nationwide have shuttered, and most of these have been in rural and underserved communities, Reed said. Planned Parenthood Keystone needed to ensure its viability for the future, thus the organization had to make this decision, she said.
“Even after these changes, there are still so many patients who continue to rely on us —patients who are uninsured, patients with private insurance, and patients with Medicaid who need abortion care. We can’t abandon them,” Reed said.
The Planned Parenthood Lancaster center started offering medication abortions in 2022. Prior to that, Lancaster County did not have an abortion provider, McKee said.
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