A Republican legislator announced Monday he is drafting two bills that he said together would eliminate half or more of the annual funding Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin receives from the state.
One of the bills deals specifically with the federal 340B program, which provides drugs, such as birth control, at a discounted price to nonprofits. In exchange, pharmaceutical companies receive a tax break.
De Pere Republican Rep. André Jacque’s bill would allow the state to charge the actual acquisition cost for birth control as well as a “reasonable” dispensing fee. He called it a “very sensible policy.”
Part of the impetus for the bill comes from audits of two family planning clinics carried out by the Department of Health Services’ Office of the Inspector General. The audits alleged the clinics overbilled the state by $3.5 million, an amount that would have shuttered the clinics. Auditors retreated from those claims in April.
Jacque said the clinics are significantly overbilling taxpayers because they charge Medicaid a higher price for than they pay for the discounted birth control prescriptions.
According to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report, Planned Parenthood could lose $4.5 million in revenue due to the change. Diane Welsh, a lawyer representing the two audited clinics, told the paper the state pays the programs more than the cost of the discounted drugs to offset low fees the programs pay for clinical services.
The other bill deals with Title X funding, modifying the way the state prioritizes and uses federal funds that go toward family planning and other preventative services. Some of that funding goes toward Planned Parenthood.
The state would be able to redirect those funds to the Wisconsin Well Woman Program, which provides breast and cervical cancer screenings to low income women, as well as county health departments, hospitals and other entities that provide care.
In their health and human services funding proposal last month, House Republicans called for eliminating the Title X program.
A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin did not respond to an email requesting comment by deadline. Jacque plans to circulate the proposals among legislators for co-sponsorship this week.