Health care advocates are pushing back against a new congressional Republican plan that would make cuts to Medicaid. In Michigan, that includes services for people enrolled in the Healthy Michigan Medicaid expansion plan that was adopted in 2013.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services says 2.6 million Michiganders are enrolled in Medicaid. Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s administration issued a report earlier this month — before the Sunday-night rollout of the GOP budget proposal — warning of the potential impact of Medicaid cuts by the federal government.
“It’s foundational to our healthcare system, whether you rely on Medicaid or access healthcare through another payer,” said Monique Stanton of the Michigan League for Public Policy, a human services advocacy organization.
Stanton said one in four Michiganders get health coverage through Medicaid. She said that means hospitals and other providers rely on Medicaid funding to keep their doors open for people who come in with Medicaid, private coverage or no insurance at all.
Stanton said the 2014 Healthy Michigan Medicaid expansion cut in half the amount of money that care providers were losing by treating people who could not afford to pay. She said that helped many rural hospitals and clinics keep operating.
“We did not necessarily have the rate of health care and hospital closures in other states — specifically states that did not have expanded Medicaid,” she said during a media call reacting to the GOP plan. “So, this could really have a specific impact in rural Michigan.”
Anthony Wright with the health care advocacy organization Families USA said the GOP plan would essentially push people off the Medicaid rolls “by putting paperwork and bureaucratic barriers in the way of people getting on and staying on health coverage.”
“This means asking many to re-enroll not just once but twice a year,” he said. “This means having more convoluted and complex requirements for determining eligibility and income that could otherwise be done easily and electronically. And this means work-reporting requirements even though the overwhelming majority of non-elderly, non-disabled adults on Medicaid are working, but simply at low-income jobs that don’t provide health coverage.”
Republicans behind the proposal have said it's necessary to cut waste and reach the Trump administration's budget-cutting goals, and to sustain a tax cut from President Donald Trump's first administration.
