Besides that, she's wrong.
The status of Viagra changed this year. I was unaware of that.
In report from 2005:
Medicaid currently spends about $15 million a year on impotence drugs, proponents of the measure said. But they cited Congressional Budget Office projections saying the government would spend $2 billion over 10 years on impotence treatments once Medicare begins offering prescription drug treatment in 2006.
It remains to be seen what happens to Viagra coverage in practice.
Birth control coverage, tho technically provided by the Medicaid, is hard for low income women to obtain.
The status of Medicaid birth control coverage is on the floor of the Senate.
The Unintended Pregnancy Reduction Act of 2007 (S. 1075/H.R. 2523), introduced in the 110th Congress in the Senate by Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Harry Reid (D-NV) and in the House by Reps. Nita Lowey (D-NY-18) and Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-3) will improve access to safe, affordable, and effective contraception by restoring and strengthening Medicaid coverage of family planning services. This bill employs a very simple principle of equity: women who would receive Medicaid coverage for pregnancy-related services should also receive coverage to prevent pregnancy if they so choose. As such, the bill requires states to provide Medicaid coverage for family planning services and supplies to all women who would be entitled to Medicaid-funded prenatal, labor, delivery, and postpartum care if they became pregnant.
Researchers estimate that one in five women of reproductive age were uninsured in 2003--a 10 percent increase in uninsured women since 2001--and roughly 400,000 more women joined the ranks of those needing publicly subsidized care in just two years. However, 27 states and the District of Columbia have seen family planning funding decline or stagnate since 1994--a trend that could be exacerbated by new Medicaid cost-cutting proposals and greater hostility to reproductive health issues in Congress and state legislatures.
Gap Widening Between U.S. Women's Birth Control Needs and Government Response | Guttmacher Institute
Currently, 11.5% of U.S. women of reproductive age (15-44) are covered by Medicaid.
That's half of the uninsured, low income women.
Meanwhile, in the states, long-running controversy over a similar provision has led one state--Missouri--to stop funding contraceptive services entirely.
My beloved home state.
State coverage is also determined by income level.
Currently, states are required to provide pregnancy-related care to women with incomes at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty level, and many states extend that to 185 percent of the federal poverty level and beyond.
For example, a single person (with no children) in New York applying on his or her own can make up to more than $19,000/year to qualify for FPBP.
19K. Have you any idea what 19K means in NYC? I do. I lived in NYC for 14 years. A slum apartment in the South Bronx cost me $850/month. I made $18/hour (36K) and I could barely afford apt/food/utilities. Birth control was out of the question. And I was 17K above the cutoff.
In Illinois:
When a woman with one child earns more than $11,244 a year, she loses Medicaid coverage.
11K.
The upshot is most women who need birth control don't get it.
Low-income women are far more likely to have an unintended pregnancy because of their lack of access to health care. In fact, a low-income woman is four times as likely to have an unintended pregnancy, five times as likely to have an unintended birth, and three times as likely to have an abortion as her higher-income counterpart.
The report finds that while unintended pregnancy and abortion rates have decreased among teenagers, college graduates and women in the middle or upper class, the rate has increased almost 30% among low-income women.
New Report Examines Medicaid’s Role in Family Planning | Guttmacher Institute
Furthermore, abortion services are provided
only in the case of rape, incest, or when the mother's health is endangered.
I was wrong about Medicaid coverage. But, in practice, this so called "coverage" is woefully inadequate.
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