Medicaid coverage of birth control fails in Legislature; mountain lion hunting ban heard

Feb. 26, 2015, 5:48 a.m. ·

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An attempt to use Medicaid dollars to provide birth control coverage for low-income women failed in the Nebraska Legislature Thursday. And the fight over whether people should be able to hunt mountain lions in the state resumed.

Omaha Sen. Jeremy Nordquist introduced the bill to provide birth control coverage for women with low incomes, defined as less than about $22,000 a year for a single woman with no children. The change would cost the state an estimated $2 million next fiscal year, but would save about $12 million the year after that, by not having to provide Medicaid coverage to children who would not be born.

Nordquist said 29 other states provide birth control coverage, and the bill makes sense. "If we can prevent unintended pregnancies, if a woman doesn’t want to get pregnant, and save tens of millions of dollars, why would we choose to not do that? And we aren’t forcing anything on anybody here. Obviously we’re not. If somebody has a moral objection to contraception, that woman doesn’t have to use it by any means," he said.

Sen. Mark Kolterman of Seward opposed the bill, which he said would expand Medicaid. "It also deals with something that I’ve fundamentally been opposed for a number of years, and that’s the federal government paying for contraception," he said. "I just don’t see why we as citizens should be asked to fund contraception for anybody."

Omaha Sen. Sara Howard, who’s 34, noted that she was one of the few women of childbearing age in the Legislature. Howard said she wanted low-income women to have the same choices she has. "I have a dream of being the parent that I want to be. And that meant I didn’t have a baby when I was in high school or college. I want other women to also be able to live that dream – to decide if and when they want to have a child," she said.

Papillion Sen. Bill Kintner ridiculed the argument that the bill would actually save Medicaid costs by preventing unwanted pregnancies. He said Medicaid is out of control. "Why don’t we create this new program over here and if we do this new program over here, they won’t get on this old expensive program," he asked, sarcastically. "This just goes on and on and on and on, and you wonder why we have a welfare state here in Nebraska."

Senators eventually voted 23-21 against the bill.

Thursday afternoon, there was a public hearing on a proposal by Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers to end mountain lion hunting in the state. The bill would do away with the ability of the Game and Parks Commission to schedule hunting seasons for mountain lions.

Chambers cited an estimate that there were 22 mountain lions in the Pine Ridge area, and 16 were killed last year – five by hunting, 11 from traps, accidents, and other causes. He said he doesn’t trust the commission. "When you have a population as small as that in this state, regardless of how you reckon the number, that rate of killing makes it clear that there’s no intent to have a stable breeding population," he said. "I think the intent of Game and Parks is to exterminate these animals."

Game and Parks Director Jim Douglas said there were more mountain lions in areas other than the Pine Ridge, including the Wildcat Hills and the Niobrara River valley, and seven of the 16 mountain lions had been killed before the estimate Chambers cited was made.

Sam Wilson, carnivore program manager for Game and Parks, said the commission’s goal is to maintain a stable mountain lion population over time. "The Game and Parks Commission has a difficult job of balancing what people are willing to have in our state, versus what the habitat itself can support," he said.

The Natural Resources Committee took no immediate action on the bill.