In the first month of the Trump administration, there has been a lot of back and forth about federal funding. Some programs and funding streams have been greatly reduced.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced the Affordable Care Act Navigator program will have its budget slashed significantly.
So what does that mean for Texas and Texans?
Walter Moreau, executive director of the Austin-based Foundation Communities, a nonprofit which provides housing and onsite services for families, veterans, and people with disabilities in Central and North Texas, joined Texas Standard to discuss the funding slash.
Moreau spoke about how the funding reduction could impact the organization’s outreach efforts and greatly reduce help for folks with complicated health situations looking to navigate their insurance options on HealthCare.gov. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: What is the Affordable Care Act Navigator program in the first place, and how is this money being used?
Walter Moreau: Yeah, simply we help people get health insurance and especially folks that have very complicated situations. They may have a cancer diagnosis or chronic disease or in other cases very, say, gig-economy income or musicians that have erratic income.
And healthcare.gov is great. But if you’ve got a complicated situation and need more help, we help you navigate that.
I see. Hence the Affordable Care Act Navigator program. So what about the future of the program for your organization? Do you get, or have you been receiving, federal money to operate this program?
Yeah. The last four years we’ve been really fortunate to have federal support. Last year we had $1.8 million and we did almost 7,000 enrollments.
We also have 100 volunteers and local funding support, and it’s a pretty robust program. We’re determined to continue on because it really impacts the lives of lots and lots of people.
But as a practical matter, you mentioned you have volunteers and you plan to continue the program. But if you don’t have this federal funding, what does that mean for you?
It’ll be a stretch. I don’t know if we’ll be able to be as big a program.
And it’s not just enrolling people, but helping them after the fact to understand their insurance. And we also help people with Medicaid and CHIP. We’ll probably have to recruit more volunteers – go from, say, 100 to 200 and scramble around for local funding and donations.
Do you have a sense that your clients know about the effect of this funding cut, or are they largely in the dark? They’re just coming to you for the service? Or, I mean, will they feel any impact of this?
I hope they don’t feel any impact because we want to stay open and keep serving the community. I doubt the word has spread very far and wide.
This was really a small federal program and I thought it would be spared attention for a while. But the administration clearly had it in its crosshairs to get rid of it.
But what I’m trying to understand is, you know, we hear a lot at one level, you know, the media about these cuts. Then you have the folks who receive the services and in you know, if they are not feeling the impact of those cuts, what we’re talking about in a sort of a larger sense, the medicines, is these nonprofits across Texas, really yours and others that will be feeling the the brunt of the effect, at least in the short term.
Correct. And there were 56 programs around the country. Some were really well run and we were the fourth most efficient in Texas. Some were not that great, but they all got slashed and some groups may fold and not continue.
Would you were you given much heads up on this?
And we had no notice. They just got that press release on Friday morning.
You got word you weren’t going to get funding through a press release by email. That’s pretty astonishing. You mentioned that some of these organizations will be folding. How do you see the impact writ large on Texas?
I think in some respects the programs around Texas didn’t enroll huge numbers of people. We focused more on folks with really complicated situations.
So where it impacts people is on a household by household. You know, the woman who has a breast cancer diagnosis and needs to make sure she’s got health insurance coverage and the right doctors and the right pharmacy. Maybe she can figure it out with healthcare.gov.
But if we’re not around and other programs aren’t around to help somebody, then they may not have coverage, and that’s going to lead to all kinds of other problems.
