Washington (AP) – Republicans weigh billions of dollars in Medicaid cupThreatening health care coverage for some of the 80 million American adults and children registered in the security security program.
The registration of millions of additional Americans for the coverage of health care funded by taxpayers such as Medicaid and the affordable care law market during the Biden administration was praised by Democrats as a success. But the Republicans, who seek to Cut federal expenses and offer lucrative tax discounts To richer companies and Americans, now see a large ripe target for the cup. The 880 billion MEDICAIDI dollars program is mainly funded by federal taxpayers, who collect up to 80% of the tab in certain states. And the States also said they had Funding disorder for years of growth And more sick patients who have registered in Medicaid.
To reduce the budget, the Congress controlled by the GOP sends work requirements for Medicaid. He also plans to pay a fixed rate narrowed to the states. All in all, during the next decade, Republican legislators could try to siphon billions of dollars in almost free healthcare coverage offered to the poorest Americans.
A few weeks before the start of the congress The administration of President Donald Trump.
And other cuts could be on the way. Already Friday, the republican administration announced that it would narrow the annual budget of the Navigator program of the Act respecting affordable care of 90% to 10 million dollars. Navigators are stationed throughout the country to help people registered with ACA and coverage of Medicaid and have helped stimulate registration for health care programs.
What the Republicans offer
President Mike Johnson by Louisiana launched the idea of linking work to Medicaid.
“It’s common sense,” said Johnson. “Small things like it makes a big difference not only in the budgeting process, but in the morale of the people. You know, work is good for you. You find dignity in work.
But around 92% of Medicaid registrants are already working, attending school or provision of care, according to a KFF analysis, a research company on health policies.
Republicans suggested a work requirement similar to the conditions of the additional nutrition aid program, commonly known as food coupons. The 16 to 59 year olds must work or volunteer at least 80 hours per month if they are not at school, treating a child under 6, disabled, pregnant or homeless. On average, the monthly household income of an enrolled snap is $ 852 and registration generally receives $ 239 in benefits.
During a GOP House retirement last month at the Trump’s Golf Resort in Doral, Florida, the Republicans said that the requirement could motivate people to find a job – perhaps even a job accompanies health insurance .
Representative Darrell Issa, R-Calif., Said that discounts should not be “at the back of the poor and needy”, but rather target those who should not benefit from it.
“Why should someone literally sit on the beach and surf, buy their sandwiches in the catering truck with their food coupons, then collect low-cost housing and so on, while writing a book”, said Issa, noting that he described a constituent more than a decade ago.
Other discounts on the table include a proposal to modify the reimbursement of the federal government to one limit per person.
This would transfer costs to states, which may be forced to make difficult choices on whom or what they cover, said Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown Center for Children and Families.
“People still have health care needs even if you cut their coverage,” said Alker. “Their health care needs are not going to disappear.”
Cups on the program could also arouse upheavals, with just over half of adults telling us to the government expenditure “too little” for Medicaid. Only 15% say he spends “too much”, according to a January Associated Press-Noc Center for Public Affairs Research survey.
Some states are already making movements
The administration of President Joe Biden largely prevented the States from promulgating their own working rules and required that 10 states abolish the requirement for coverage of Medicaid.
With Trump now in charge, some states led by the Republicans continue before the congress to add working rules again. Governors of Arkansas, Iowa and Ohio have announced that they would continue to approve the Federal for Medicare and Medicaid Services to introduce work requirements again. And last fall, the voters of the southern Dakota signed a plan to add a work rule.
When the Arkansas promulgated a work requirement during the Trump years, around 18,000 people lost coverage. The rule was then blocked by a federal judge and the democratic administration of Biden.
Some people have lost coverage because they had trouble accessing the state website to record their hours or have other procedural problems, said Trevor Hawkins, a lawyer for legal aid Arkansas. The organization continued on behalf of the beneficiaries of Medicaid who have been deleted from the coverage.
“These hoops, these things are very consecutive,” said Hawkins, “there were many people who had difficult times.”
In Georgia, Paul Mikell, 47, is too familiar with these hoops.
He is registered in the plan of the coverage of Georgia, which offers Medicaid for a slice of poor people who do too much to qualify for traditional Medicaid. Georgia, which has not expanded Medicaid like most other states, demands that people work, volunteer or go to school for 80 hours a month in exchange for access to extended health coverage.
Mikell makes monthly records of 15 miles (24 kilometers) to a government office where he reports his working hours. Sometimes he said, when he goes online to check if his hours have been recorded, they are not there.
He compared navigation in the online system to a battle – one fought on a computer at the library or borrowed from a friend.
In Idaho, where legislators are considering a state work rule and a three -year limit for the social benefits of Medicaid, the family doctor Peter Crane believes that around two thirds of his patients are registered in the program.
Many work in farms, on the ranchs or in local phosphate mines. Before the State develops Medicaid to cover those who have income up to 138% of the level of poverty, many of its uninsured patients completely avoided the doctor. The abdominal pain has been ignored for months, to the point of requiring hospitalization for serious gallbladder infection, he said.
“These are not aberrant values,” said Crane about those who enrolled in Medicaid during a state hearing last week. “These are workers from our state who are employed and manage small businesses.”
Democrats warn against the side effects of health establishments, including rural hospitals and nursing homes. Hospitals have benefited from an increase in registration for health insurance programs such as Medicaid because it guarantees the payment of a patient.
“Hospitals will close, including in rural America and Urban America and in the heart of America,” warned the Democratic leader of the Hakeem Jeffries Chamber of New York during a recent speech on the bedroom. “The nursing homes will be closed and the Americans, the children, the elderly, those who suffer from disabilities, will be injured.”
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This story has been corrected to show that the work requirement would be 80 hours a month, not every week.
___ Demillo reported by Little Rock, Arkansas. The editor-in-chief of the Associated Press Amelia Thomson-Deveaux in Washington and the writers Charlotte Kramon in Atlanta; Rebecca Boone in Boisse, Idaho; And Jack Dura in Bismarck, Dakota from the North, contributed.
