Low-Income Women's Access to Family Planning

Washington provides increased access to reproductive health care services through a Section 1115 family planning waiver.  The waiver allows the state to cover family planning services for all men and women of childbearing age with incomes at or below 200% of the federal poverty level, who are not otherwise eligible for state and federal health care programs.  

Beneficiaries of family planning coverage available through the waiver are not required to pay premiums or co-payments for covered services.  Covered services include: medically necessary services and supplies related to birth control, pregnancy prevention and preventive services (includes abstinence counseling, natural family planning, birth control pills, the contraceptive ring and patch, male and female condoms, contraceptive injections, diaphragms, cervical caps and the contraceptive sponge, emergency contraception, spermicides, IUDs, and male and female sterilizations); annual gynecological exam.  

The waiver will expire on June 30, 2009.  

Wash. Family Planning Demonstration Fact Sheet, Ctrs. for Medicare and Medicaid Servs., July 13, 2006 at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/MedicaidStWaivProgDemoPGI/MWDL/itemdetail.asp?filterType=none&filterByDID=-99&sortByDID=2&sortOrder=ascending&itemID=CMS047871&intNumPerPage=2000 (last visited Dec. 5, 2008); NARAL Pro-Choice America Survey of State Medicaid Offices