Via press release from KY Policy
Members of the Kentucky Medicaid Defense Coalition, a group fighting to protect Medicaid in the commonwealth, warned in a press call Thursday that budget and tax legislation passed earlier in the day by the U.S. House of Representatives would strip life-sustaining health care from many thousands of Kentuckians, harming our health and our economy.
“This bill would result in an estimated $1.7 billion cut to Kentucky’s Medicaid program, terminating health coverage for as many as 345,000 people across the state,” said Dustin Pugel, Policy Director at the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy. “These coverage loses would be in addition to estimated 47,000 who would become uninsured due to the failure of Congress to extend the enhanced subsidies on kynect, our health insurance marketplace.”
“These would not only be the biggest, most severe cuts in Medicaid history, they’re larger than all previous cuts to Medicaid combined,” Pugel said. In addition to lost health care access, these cuts would mean fewer jobs in the health care industry, especially in rural areas where health care is among the largest employers.
Policies in the legislation that would be responsible for these cuts include cumbersome and unnecessary work reporting requirements, more frequent paperwork to prove eligibility, a freeze to provider taxes and the expiration of important subsidies on the health insurance exchange.
Sarah Hill, a former Medicaid participant who lives in Lexington, said Medicaid helped her work through debilitating mental health struggles. “Over the years, I have lost relationships and friendships and months and years of my life to this disease,” she said. “In 2014 the expansion of Medicaid happened, and through a herculean effort on my part, I was able to sign up. Because of that I was able to get the medication I needed, the care that I needed to stabilize and get back into the workforce.”
If the excessive work reporting requirements included in the House budget legislation were in place when Hill needed Medicaid, she said she wouldn’t have received it. “I could not have done the paperwork needed to sign up and I could not have handled the stress of continually recertifying my need,” she said.
Melissa Mather, Chief Communications Officer at Family Health Centers in Louisville, said more than half of the 40,000 people her Federally Qualified Health Center served last year were covered through Medicaid. “It’s what keeps our doors open,” she said.
Lost coverage due to the changes in the House budget will lead patients at Family Health Centers to make difficult choices between health care and other necessities. “Do we want Kentuckians to have to choose between buying grocery and their medicine?” she asked. “I think that’s an untenable choice we’re asking people to make.”
Lastly, Dr. Edward Miller, an obstetrician with UofL Health, said cutting Medicaid will only make a sick state even sicker. “The commonwealth of Kentucky is sick,” he said, noting Kentucky’s high rates of hypertension, diabetes, smoking and new cancer detections.
“What is decreasing access going to do?” he asked. “You don’t have to be a doctor to know that decreasing access for those at the most risk is only going make us plummet further down those rankings. Kentucky is only going to get sicker by decreasing access to Medicaid.”
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For more information on the impacts of the House budget legislation, see the following analysis on KyPolicy.org:
