Medicaid started paying Planned Parenthood and two other abortion clinics again on July 5, 2026, ending a cutoff that lasted almost a year The Guardian. The funding ban was part of a tax and spending law President Trump signed on July 4, 2025. Unlike many laws that stay in place permanently, this one had a built-in end date: one year. It simply expired on its own rather than through any political decision NPR.

The law stopped Medicare from paying three abortion providers — Planned Parenthood, which operates roughly 600 clinics, and two smaller organizations. To qualify for the ban, they had to receive more than $800,000 annually from Medicaid. Courts became involved as well as Congress. A judge issued a preliminary order on July 17, 2025 — Planned Parenthood Federation of America v. Kennedy — that protected Planned Parenthood clinics from the full force of the law. That protection expanded nationwide by July 28, 2025 KFF. The legal case ended on January 30, 2026 Georgetown Litigation Tracker. This happened after the Supreme Court ruled in June 2025 — Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic — that states can kick Planned Parenthood out of their Medicaid programs Politico. That didn't directly force the federal freeze, but it meant providers had lost a tool they might have used to fight it.

What matters most now is the permanent damage that happened during the year the money was cut off. Planned Parenthood closed nearly 30 of its 600 clinics across the country, naming the funding loss as a major reason The Guardian. Fewer people could get services: clinics gave out about 25% fewer birth control prescriptions and did roughly 20% fewer breast exams than they did before. In Wisconsin, Planned Parenthood even stopped offering abortion services for about a month. The organization gave up a special designation that helped it accept insurance from marketplace plans — it did this to get ready to take Medicaid payments again once the freeze ended.

Where you lived determined how bad the cutoff was. Fourteen states used their own money to cover some or all of the lost federal payments. California gave $90 million to Planned Parenthood clinics to make up the difference Planned Parenthood. Massachusetts did the same for an organization called Health Imperatives, which kept all its services running the whole time — the group says state money and a grant from the Gates Foundation made that possible. In New York, Planned Parenthood asked for state funding to backfill the gap and also money for a new state program. These clinics in richer or more supportive states treated state money as a temporary fix, not a permanent answer.

States that didn't help out left their providers to absorb the cut. Maine Family Planning closed three clinics that served about 1,000 people in a mostly rural area; the organization says those clinics won't reopen even now that federal payments are back. In Florida, Planned Parenthood shut down a clinic in Lakeland that is not expected to reopen. Part of the reason was worry about Congress cutting funding again in the future, according to a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Action Fund — showing that providers don't see this as a final answer, just a pause.

The gap between states is the key story here. A federal rule that was supposed to treat everyone the same way ended up hitting different states very differently. It depended on whether a state's government was willing to spend its own money to replace the federal payments. States with divided government or with legislatures opposed to Planned Parenthood had no choice, so their providers made hard decisions — closing clinics, stopping services — that don't go away just because federal money comes back. In Wisconsin, the Planned Parenthood affiliate had to go through a process to change its legal status before it could accept Medicaid again. That is not the same as things going back to normal before 2025; it is slower progress after a year of losing ground.

Congress could try to bring back the funding ban in future spending laws, because the original rule had an end date built in. Nothing right now shows which way that will go, and the Supreme Court's ruling still lets each state ban Planned Parenthood from Medicaid on its own. Providers in Florida and Maine seem to be getting ready for the freeze to happen again, closing buildings they don't think they will need rather than ones they expect to use again.