2007 Prevention First Agenda

This legislation is the prescription for change that is needed to ensure

• Title X, America's family planning program, is fully funded
• low-income women have access to reproductive health care through Medicaid
• teens are protected with REAL sex education
• people worldwide have access to comprehensive reproductive health care
  

Tell your member of Congress to support the Prevention First Act.

Key Priorities

Fully Fund Title X Family Planning Services

Title X, the nation's first and only federal program dedicated to the provision of family planning services, supports services to five million women each year — to help plan pregnancies, prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV, and detect breast and cervical cancer at the earliest stages. Between 1980 and 1999, Title X provided a wide range of these reproductive health services to millions of women and helped women avoid almost 20 million unintended pregnancies. Despite the public health benefits and cost savings of this critical preventive care, Title X has been grossly under-funded at $283 million for the last few years; this figure is less than 50 percent of what would be appropriate to keep pace with inflation since the program’s inception. At a minimum Title X must be funded at $311 million for FY2008 to help fulfill its promise of providing quality reproductive health care to low-income and uninsured women and families.

Expand Access to Reproductive Health Care Through Medicaid

Improving access to safe, affordable, and effective contraception is vital if the United States ever hopes to reduce its high rate of unintended pregnancies. The Unintended Pregnancy Reduction Act of 2006 would strengthen Medicaid coverage of family planning services by requiring states to provide Medicaid coverage for family planning services and supplies to all women who would be entitled to pregnancy-related care. This measure will dramatically increase access to family planning services while providing a cost savings of billions of dollars over 10 years.

We must repeal the citizenship documentation requirement and prevent low-income citizens from facing a loss of health care coverage. This new requirement became federal law under the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) and requires all U.S. citizens applying for Medicaid or renewing their coverage to prove their citizenship by submitting a passport or a combination of a birth certificate and another ID. This requirement is expected to prevent otherwise eligible children and adults from obtaining necessary health care services. Many American citizens do not have these forms of identification; the provision disproportionately affects those who need services the most and who are least able to obtain them elsewhere. It is extremely burdensome to states, costly for providers, and devastating for public health. The requirement must be repealed.

The DRA includes a provision that adversely affects Planned Parenthood’s long-standing ability to purchase contraceptives at a discounted (that is, nominal) price, and is having a devastating fiscal impact on approximately 500,000 Planned Parenthood patients. Pharmaceutical manufacturers participating in the Medicaid program must provide discounts on covered outpatient drugs purchased by so-called “safety net” providers. The problem is that the Bush administration has failed to define safety net providers as a category eligible to receive nominally priced drugs. This policy must be changed. Safety net providers rely on significantly reduced prices to stretch scarce dollars to ensure that low-income, uninsured, and underinsured Americans have access to affordable, quality health care.

Protect Teens Through REAL Sex Ed

Since 1996, Congress has committed more than $1 billion in federal and state funding for abstinence-only programs that do not teach teens how to prevent pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections — other than through abstinence. Currently, programs receiving federal funds are prohibited from discussing the benefits of contraceptives — placing teens at grave risk for unintended pregnancy and STIs, including HIV/AIDS. Each year American teens acquire more than four million STIs, and almost 750,000 teens become pregnant. Teens need accurate, complete information to help them both postpone sexual activity and protect themselves if they become sexually active. The $178 million in federal dollars currently allocated to these ill-conceived abstinence-only programs must flow to programs that tell the whole truth about contraceptives, provide comprehensive sex education — including a focus on abstinence, and protect teens from these life-altering and life-threatening consequences.

Support Access to Reproductive Health Care Worldwide

A number of policies instituted by the U.S government threaten the health and well-being of millions of women and men in other countries. President Bush reinstated the global gag rule, which compromises health care and severely limits access to family planning and other basic reproductive health services. The Bush administration has also hindered efforts to stem the spread of HIV. The President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) stipulates that at least one-third of all HIV/AIDS prevention funds be spent on “abstinence or fidelity promotion” programs, even though the government’s own report shows the abstinence restriction is harmful and should be eliminated. And for the past six years, President Bush has withheld funding for UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, which provides birth control supplies, education, prenatal and obstetric care, and prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS.  These policies threaten the health and safety of millions of individuals in the poorest nations of the world and must be stopped.