From The Texas Tribune:
Texas leaders have shown a decadeslong antipathy toward Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program that covers millions of low-income and vulnerable residents.
They declined additional federal money that, under the Affordable Care Act, would have allowed Medicaid to offer health care coverage to more low-income families. The state was among the last to insure women for an entire year after they gave birth. And when the federal government last year ended a policy that required states to keep people on their Medicaid rolls during the coronavirus pandemic, Texas officials rushed to kick off those they deemed ineligible, ignoring persistent warnings that the speedy process could lead to some people being wrongfully removed.
Come January, when Donald Trump assumes the presidency for the second time, Texas leaders could get another opportunity to whittle down the program — this time with fewer constraints.
Trump has not shared any plans to cut Medicaid, which covers about 80 million Americans, and his campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Health care advocates and experts, however, say that his past efforts to scale back the program, as well as positions taken by conservative groups and Republican lawmakers who back him, indicate that it would likely be a target for severe reductions.
“We expect the Republicans to move very quickly to cut Medicaid dramatically and indeed end its guarantee of coverage as it exists today,” said Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families in Washington, D.C.
Currently, the federal government picks up, on average, nearly 70% of Medicaid spending, with states assuming the remaining costs. (A state’s share varies based mostly on what percentage of its residents are impoverished.) Any decisions to cut federal spending would likely lead states to shrink the number of people they deem eligible and the care that enrollees are entitled to receive, Alker and other experts said.
That would be particularly devastating in Texas, which already has one of the country’s lowest percentages of residents covered through Medicaid and where officials lack the political will to make up the difference in funding with state money, experts say. Parents with two children, for example, must earn less than $285 monthly to qualify for Medicaid for themselves.
“Our elected officials would have to decide whether they want to cut health care for pregnant women, kids, people with disabilities, or seniors because that is essentially who Medicaid covers in Texas,” Adriana Kohler, a policy director for Texans Care for Children, a statewide nonprofit that advocates for families, said in a statement.
Spokespeople for Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, and the state’s Health and Human Services Commission did not respond to repeated requests for comment. During Abbott’s prior role as the state’s attorney general, he helped to lead a successful lawsuit against the federal government, ensuring that states did not risk losing Medicaid funding entirely if they didn’t want to cover more residents as part of the Affordable Care Act.
Even when Texas does offer Medicaid coverage to its most vulnerable residents, state officials enabled a system that creates often insurmountable barriers to receiving care. A 2018 Dallas Morning News investigation found that some of the insurance companies Texas hired to administer Medicaid benefits systematically denied expensive and, at times, life-saving treatments to bolster profits. Critics say problems with the system persist despite legislative reforms spurred by that series of stories.
Texas insures more than 4 million residents through Medicaid, which amounts to a smaller percentage of its total population than almost any other state. But given its sheer size, the state still covers the third most people in the nation, behind only California and New York. The program provides health care for 3 in 8 children, 3 in 5 nursing home residents and 2 in 7 people with disabilities in Texas, according to KFF, a national health policy research organization. It is the top funder for nursing homes and long-term care services for the disabled and elderly, and it pays for nearly half of all births in the state.
