Nearly one-third of Medicaid funding could be on the chopping block as lawmakers look for ways to reduce the national deficit.
A new report found the proposed changes, totaling around $2.5 trillion, are more likely to harm rural communities and small towns than metro areas. More than 1.2 million Kentucky residents rely on the program for health coverage.
Emily Beauregard, executive director of Kentucky Voices for Health, said federal Medicaid funding brings more than $14 billion into Kentucky every year.
“It’s what keeps the doors of our rural hospitals open,” Beauregard pointed out. “It’s what covers half our births and seven in 10 elderly Kentuckians living in nursing homes.”
Over the past decade, 120 rural hospitals across the country have either closed or stopped offering inpatient services. According to the report, Kentucky ranks among a handful of states with the highest percentage of working-age adults who rely on Medicaid for health coverage.
Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, said policymakers need to realize programs such as Medicaid are not government waste because they keep folks healthy enough to work and create better health outcomes for kids.
“In the long term, it’s a much better investment of taxpayer dollars,” Alker contended. “Because it’ll pay dividends to make sure that these families are getting the care they need.”
Beauregard added Medicaid cuts will hurt the state’s economy as much as its workforce and residents’ health.
“I would fully expect that if people lose Medicaid coverage, they will be uninsured,” Beauregard predicted. “Or they’ll be purchasing junk plans that really aren’t going to cover them when they need it, and we will see people delaying care.”
Medical debt could also rise in the Commonwealth. One National Institutes of Health study found ZIP codes with the lowest incomes in states that did not expand Medicaid had the nation’s highest levels of medical debt.
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Written by Nadia Ramlagan for Kentucky News Service. Cross-posted from the Northern Kentucky Tribune.
