Measuring Public Costs Associated With Loss of Confidentiality for Adolescents Seeking Confidential Reproductive Health Care: How High the Costs? How Heavy the Burden?

In this issue, Franzini et al¹ present a useful cost model to measure the potential impact of Texas legislators’ decisions to substantially curtail confidentiality protections in subsidized family planning services, both by requiring health care professionals to report most sexually active adolescents younger than 17 years² and by requiring parental consent for family planning services, including prescription drugs for adolescents younger than 18 years.³ This study is particularly timely as several other states and the federal government are attempting to expand the role of parental consent in the provision of reproductive health care.^4,5