Erica Wilson-Domer is the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio.
Ohio families are already feeling squeezed by rising costs, from groceries, rent, gas, utilities and beyond.
At a time when affordability is one of voters’ top concerns, Ohio’s leaders should work to make healthcare more accessible and less expensive. Instead, Republicans are pushing policies that would make it harder for thousands of Ohioans to get the healthcare they deserve.
Leading Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, I see firsthand how those pressures affect people’s ability to afford the healthcare they need.
Ohioans are being punished
Last July, Congress passed a federal budget that prohibited Planned Parenthood’s ability to accept Medicaid. The
stated goal was to punish us for providing abortion, even though Medicaid in Ohio was already legally barred from paying for abortion, with very rare exceptions.
What it ended up doing was punishing patients. At Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio alone, 43% of our patients – roughly 22,000 of the 50,550 people we see each year – rely on Medicaid for cancer screenings, wellness exams, birth control, STI testing and other preventive care and routine reproductive health services.
For many Ohioans, Planned Parenthood is the closest healthcare provider they have – one that accepts Medicaid, works with them to make care affordable and treats them without judgment.
The restriction caused serious and, in some cases, irreversible harm in communities across the country. Planned Parenthood is often a critical source of affordable care for patients with few other options, including those who rely on Medicaid. When health centers were forced to close, some patients had to seek care in more expensive settings, such as urgent care centers, emergency rooms and hospitals, while others may have delayed or gone without care altogether. It also raises healthcare costs for all Ohioans, regardless of their insurance coverage, and increases the burden on already stretched health systems that have already downsized or closed offices.
Weakening Medicaid is the GOP goal
That Medicaid-defund provision has since lapsed, but Republican candidates up and down the ballot have made clear they want to bring it back.
Sen. Jon Husted voted for the federal budget bill that defunded Planned Parenthood and said, “I love doing that kind of stuff,” in response to weakening Medicaid.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy vowed to cut nearly $300 million from organizations like Planned Parenthood while co-leading DOGE. He has also accepted the endorsement of a group that requires candidates to oppose not just abortion, but all forms of birth control and IVF.
The Republican-controlled Ohio Legislature passed a state budget that diverts millions of taxpayer dollars to unregulated crisis pregnancy centers – which don’t offer the cancer screenings, birth control, or STI testing patients actually need – while rolling back Medicaid coverage for hundreds of thousands of Ohioans in the same bill.
Now is not the time to penalize affordable healthcare providers and make it harder for Ohioans to get the care they need to enjoy healthy lives. Ohio has some of the highest STI rates and Black maternal mortality rates in the country. These politically motivated attacks deepen health inequities and perpetuate barriers to affordable, culturally competent care.
On top of that, while insurance companies are raking in record-high profits, hundreds of thousands of Ohioans are losing access to care. Ohio faced the largest percentage drop in Affordable Care Act marketplace enrollment of any state in the country after federal subsidies that lowered premiums expired. Also, the Urban Institute estimated that 176,000 to 356,000 more Ohioans could lose Medicaid coverage by 2028 with new work-verification and eligibility-check requirements.
When families are in a financial crunch, healthcare is often not something they can afford to forgo. But when they do postpone routine care, it can resurface later as an ER bill instead of a checkup, or a late-stage diagnosis instead of an early one.
If elected, Husted, Ramaswamy and others will continue this administration's record of rolling back healthcare coverage and exacerbating and increasing the healthcare and provider shortage crisis in Ohio.
We need leaders who protect our freedom to choose our own healthcare providers, who fight to make care more affordable, and who don't get to decide for us what kind of care we’re allowed to have.
In Ohio, make sure you’re registered to vote at your current address by Oct. 5, so you can cast your ballot by Nov. 3. Vote for candidates who will protect affordable healthcare and your freedom to choose the care that’s right for you, and reject those who would take that freedom away.
Erica Wilson-Domer is the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Husted, Ramaswamy plan to do even more irreversible harm to your health | Opinion
