Governors wary of Medicaid cost shift in Senate health bill
The proposal released Thursday calls for a slower phase-out of the Medicaid expansion than a bill adopted earlier by the House. Yet it still would force those states to figure out what to do about the millions of lower-income Americans who used it to gain health coverage.
The doubts about the latest plan from
"I have deep concerns with details in the
Kasich was part of a group of Republican and Democratic governors who wrote a letter last week to
Another was
"It appears that the proposed bill will dramatically reduce coverage and will negatively impact our future state budgets," he said in an emailed statement.
Part of the Obama law was an offer to the states: If they would expand Medicaid, a joint federal-state insurance program for low-income people, to able-bodied adults without children at home, the federal government would pick up the entire tab in the initial years. The federal share drops to 90 percent after 2020.
The expansion has provided coverage to 11 million people in the 31 states that accepted it.
The
In both plans, states could keep coverage for the newly eligible adults, but federal taxpayers would not continue to pay a larger share of the bill. The
In addition, it calls for extra federal funding to be awarded to states for addiction and mental health treatment, services covered by Medicaid. Both chambers would have to agree on details for the bill to be sent to President
Trying to keep the expansion without added federal help could blow a hole in state budgets.
In
"We anticipate it will be hundreds of thousands of Oregonians that will be stripped of health care under this proposal in order to get a tax break for wealthy Americans," said
That was a reference to other provisions of the Republican plan that would cut taxes by nearly
In
Former
Brewer said cutting Medicaid eventually will cause private insurance premiums to rise because people losing coverage will seek treatment in hospital emergency rooms.
"We're going to pay for it one way or another; there are no free lunches," she said in an interview with The Associated Press.
A spokesman for
"I am deeply concerned about the potential effects of a one-size-fits-all approach," he said.
Mulvihill reported from
This story has been updated to clarify that the expansion was aimed primarily at adults without children at home.
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