No, Medicaid and Title X Do Not Subsidize Abortions

Last updated on: October 6, 2015 at 1:20 pm by Libby Anne

No, Medicaid and Title X Do Not Subsidize Abortions 2015-10-06T13:20:48-04:00 Libby Anne

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Earlier today one of my readers left this comment:

As one of my anti-abortion friends put it, “Money is fungible. If the government gives PP money for non-abortion services, then PP has EXTRA money to provide abortions.” She had a neat little cartoon to illustrate it, along with one of those examples: If Penny gives Jim $20 but tells him he can’t spend it on cigarettes then he is not going to buy cigarettes because he only has $20. But if Jim gets $20 from the government, then he has $40 and can spend THAT $20 on cigarettes.

This analogy is fundamentally broken. Let me fix it for you.

Jim charges $40 per hour for tutoring. Penny’s parents have given her $20 for study materials but have told her she can’t spend it on tutoring. So Penny offers to pay Jim $20 for a study sheet for her hardest class. But at the last minute, Penny’s parents object to her purchasing study materials from a tutor on the basis that they’re against tutoring because college students who can’t pass a class on their own are clearly lazy, and failing a class should be the natural consequences of being lazy, and they don’t want to subsidize laziness. (This ignores the fact that plenty of completely studious students end up needing tutors, but then, abortion opponents often seem to think that women getting abortions are all slutty sluts out slutting it up).

Penny’s parents claim that by paying Jim $20 for a study sheet, they would be subsidizing his tutoring, but this isn’t the case at all. After all, tutors like Jim will make $40 an hour tutoring regardless of whether they also sell study sheets. In fact, by selling study sheets Jim is decreasing the amount of tutoring people will need (by offering a preventative service), and as such, decreasing the amount of money he makes from tutoring. The money paid for study sheets does not “subsidize” Jim’s other services, in part because making $20 on a study sheet is operating on a loss anyway. (See also, Medicaid reimbursements are so low that some doctors refuse to take Medicaid patients.)

So no, Medicaid and Title X funding do not free up Planned Parenthood’s money for providing abortions. All these programs do is reimburse Planned Parenthood for the contraceptive and other non-abortion women’s healthcare services they provide to poor women. Medicaid and Title X do not provide Planned Parenthood with money for nothing—money that can then be rerouted elsewhere—these programs simply reimburse Planned Parenthood for services offered. And because these reimbursements are low, Planned Parenthood isn’t profiting off of offering these services.

But let’s take this analogy a step further.

In order to ensure that their money does not “subsidize” tutoring, Penny’s parents ban her from purchasing study materials from anyone who also provides tutoring. Technically Penny can go elsewhere for study materials, but she’s a busy college student and Jim lived nearby and was the most accessible source of such materials. Besides, other study materials providers charge far more than Jim was charging. So without the study sheet and without convenient access to other study materials, Penny tries to pass the class on her own, but it’s extremely hard and the professor isn’t good at explaining concepts, so she falls behind. Desperate and on the verge of failing, Penny turns to Jim for tutoring, paying him $40 an hour out of her own pocket.

By barring Penny from receiving study materials from anyone who also provides tutoring services, her parents cut off her most available supply of study materials and, as a result, she ended up paying for tutoring out of her own pocket. Penny’s parents told themselves they were trying to ensure that their dollars didn’t subsidize tutoring, but in fact by decreasing the study material suppliers available to Penny they put her in a situation where she ultimately found herself in desperate need of tutoring services. In other words, their attempt to ensure that they didn’t subsidize Jim’s tutoring increased the demand for Jim’s tutoring.

The claim that Medicaid and Title X funding free up Planned Parenthood to provide more abortions is utterly ludicrous, in part because that funding is for services rendered and in part because the reimbursements tend to be below market value, but also because cutting off low-income women’s access to contraceptives and other non-abortion services through Planned Parenthood will in fact increase the demand for abortions and thus increase the amount of abortions provided by Planned Parenthood.

One more thing. While I have seen people claim that Medicaid and Title X funding subsidize Planned Parenthood’s abortion services, I have also seen it claimed that Planned Parenthood profits off of abortions. Indeed, abortion is portrayed as Planned Parenthood’s cash cow. But here’s the thing—you can’t have it both ways. Either providing abortion is extremely lucrative and Planned Parenthood is getting rich off of abortions, or Medicaid and Title X money subsidizes abortion by freeing up money for abortions that Planned Parenthood otherwise would not be able to provide.

Or maybe neither is true.

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