U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is slamming a recent Republican proposal – known as the reconciliation bill — that she said would cause almost 8.6 million Americans, including up to 1.5 million New Yorkers, to lose their Medicaid coverage.
“This proposal would be catastrophic for the millions of Americans who rely on Medicaid,” said Senator Gillibrand. “Republicans should be focused on bringing down the cost of essentials; instead, they are making health care harder to access and more expensive. They have proposed work requirements for Medicaid that ignore the fact that most Medicaid recipients already work, and would cost New York State an estimated $500 million to administer and enforce, all for minimal cost savings. The Republican bill puts kids at risk of losing health care through Medicaid and CHIP and puts the future of our state’s many rural hospitals in jeopardy. This is an unacceptable piece of legislation, and I will be doing everything in my power to stop it from passing.”
Specifically, Gillibrand said the Republican proposal would:
- Put an estimated 400,000 kids at risk of losing their health care by undoing protections that make sure eligible children are enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The bill allows states to once again impose annual and lifetime benefit limits, waiting periods, and lockout periods for kids enrolled in CHIP.
- Increase health care costs by undoing policies that make sure eligible low-income seniors and people with disabilities can more easily enroll in Medicaid. Eligible people with Medicare can sign up for Medicaid to help cover the cost of their Medicare premiums and cost-sharing. Because of this bill, more than 1 million seniors will pay higher Medicare premiums because they will not have Medicaid.
- Create more red tape and barriers to care by burdening Americans with onerous paperwork, including new eligibility rules requiring certain Medicaid recipients to reapply every 6 months. These new requirements will also impose additional administrative costs on the program.
- Take nurses out of nursing homes by undoing federal standards that make sure nursing homes are adequately staffed by qualified nursing professionals and ensure residents’ basic, minimum safety. Among other requirements, these policies require that nursing homes have a registered nurse on site 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. This $23 billion Medicaid cut diminishes seniors’ dignity and quality of life and rolls back policies expected to save the lives of 13,000 nursing home residents per year.
- Put rural hospitals at risk of closure by limiting state-directed payments, known as provider taxes, that make it possible for rural and urban hospitals and clinics to remain open and care for patients by providing maternity, emergency, and behavioral health care. Funds collected by states through provider taxes are often directed to health care providers whose costs far exceed base Medicaid payment rates. These providers tend to be located in rural America, where health care services are hard to find, or in dense urban areas, where the cost to deliver health care is high and health care providers are serving more people with Medicaid.
More information about the proposal is available here.
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