U.S. Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) met with Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains’ (PPRM) Vice President of Government Affairs Jack Teter today to hear about the impact a federal funding ban has had on the organization.
“We had patients canceling their Medicaid on their cell phones in our waiting rooms begging to be seen,” said Teter. “We obviously have patients in a great deal of distress. There was a lot of confusion to work through with the department around, for example, if a patient had come in for an STI test before the shutdown, and then we got their positive results after July 4, could we call them to give them their test results? Or do we need to try to give those results to the health department so the health department will contact them? So really, just absolutely severing our relationship with our patients. There has since been a temporary restraining order, which then expired, [and] we had to cancel appointments a second time, now there’s a stay. It is possible that the U.S. Supreme Court will issue a nationwide stay on the current injunction tomorrow or Friday.”
Teter is also hoping Colorado lawmakers will allow Colorado’s general fund to cover PPRM’s patients. “We have a plan,” he explained to Crow. “During the special session tomorrow, we’re introducing a bill that would allow the Department [of Healthcare Policy and Financing] to pay us using state general fund dollars in the absence of a federal match, and that would sort of protect our patients and give us a little bit of stability as this kind of bops back and forth through the courts.”
Planned Parenthood isn’t the only one facing budget cuts caused by the Republican-backed “Big Beautiful Bill.” Colorado legislators are meeting in special session tomorrow to address an estimated $1.2 billion deficit caused by the federal budget bill. Asking for funding during a session focused on cutting spending seems counterintuitive, but Teter insisted it was necessary.
“[The federal funding ban] is an existential threat to the organization,” Teter said. “Planned Parenthood in Louisiana has closed their doors. One of the California affiliates has closed six health centers. I can’t possibly overstate how serious this is for our continued ability to serve our patients, and the rest of the state’s primary care infrastructure cannot just absorb our patients, there are too many patients who receive care at Planned Planned to just sort of be absorbed.”
Teter explained how the funding ban is already impacting patients. “We had a patient who was referred to us by the local emergency department,” he said. “She was having a missed abortion [a miscarriage in which the fetus didn’t form or is no longer developing, but the placenta and embryonic tissues are still in the uterus]. The emergency room said that she would best receive care at Planned Parenthood, so they sent her to us, and then we had to turn her away bleeding back to the hospital, even though the hospital had sent her to us.”
Colorado Rep. Brandi Bradley (R-Littleton) has already announced plans to introduce legislation prohibiting Medicaid funds from going toward abortions or gender-affirming health care. “As your Representative, I will always stand with Colorado families, not special interests or political agendas,” she wrote on X. “Together, we can keep Medicaid sustainable for our most vulnerable, low-income families, children, seniors, and individuals with disabilities, and protect taxpayer dollars from being wasted on radical priorities.”
Crow expressed frustration with the Republican response to the impact of the budget bill. “All eight members of the House delegation did an event last week at the Colorado Chamber luncheon and we talked a lot about health care and a lot of about the 370,000-plus Coloradans who are estimated to lose their health care,” he said. “Some projections are even higher, upwards of 10 hospitals that might be closing, primarily in rural areas, and the people that represent those areas just said, ‘No, it’s made up.’ I’m like, ‘Well, it is not made up. The CEOs of those hospitals are literally telling me they’re going to close the hospitals.’ Don’t gaslight us on this. It’s just true.”
With Republican control in the U.S. House and Senate, Democrats are struggling to stop or slow down President Donald Trump’s agenda. “One of the areas where we’re trying to use full leverage is on appropriations,” said Crow. “I’m somebody that believes that is our primary source of leverage at this point. If the Republicans want to move forward any part of their agenda, then we have to hold firm on those efforts and to make sure that we don’t have the prohibitions in the bill. That’s my primary area of focus right now.”
While abortion restrictions have proven unpopular as an electoral issue, Crow said there are no signs of Republicans softening on the issue. “Waiting for Republicans to show courage and to do the right thing by their constituents has not borne a lot of fruit recently,” he said. “We saw that with the Trump megabill where every Republican, all but one, basically capitulated to Donald Trump’s will and voted for a bill that would devastate their communities. Unabashedly, they did this. I’m not expecting [bipartisan cooperation] but we still work towards it, right? Just because I don’t expect it to happen — and don’t anymore — after having been burned a lot hoping that people would do the right thing by their constituents over my six and a half years in Congress, learning that there are just plenty of people who will not do the right thing by the district and community because of pressure by Donald Trump, it doesn’t mean that we don’t work towards it, because without that, we don’t have the numbers to stop it, right? We don’t have the vote numbers right now without some Republicans. So we’re working. We’re working it hard. We’re trying to get a few of those vulnerable swing district Republicans, as we call them, to kind of come over and say, ‘This is overwhelmingly unpopular in their district. It’s going to devastate your community. There are families and women who are going to die and lose access to care if you don’t do the right thing.’ I’m not going to stop doing that.”
Among those vulnerable Republicans is U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans (R-CO). “I think Gabe Evans is one of the most vulnerable members of Congress in the state,” said Teter. “He was in the State Legislature. He received thousands of attempts to reach out to his office about this. I think for anyone to claim that they don’t know what the impact of this [bill] will be is completely unbelievable. His constituents have some of the highest insurance coverage through Medicaid in the entire state and they’re losing access to their primary care provider, and [Republicans] will go and they will insist, ‘No one’s gonna lose access to care. This isn’t happening.’ And it is. We’ve canceled the appointments of the patients in all congressional districts in the state. We serve patients through Medicaid from all 64 counties- the Department checked. Those folks have all been cut off from access to care.”
During the 2024 election, Evans was endorsed by a host of anti-abortion lawmakers from across the country.
