Alliance Alert: The following is an edited summary from the New York Times article on the GOP-led House Energy and Commerce committee’s proposed changes to Medicaid that was released last night and their anticipated impact on beneficiaries and states taken from excerpts identified by the Alliance for Rights and Recovery. As written, the proposal would have to be approved by both the full House and Senate.
It also includes an article on the anticipated impact of work requirements in New York from USA Today’s New York Team.
Let Congress know you are opposed to Medicaid cuts at https://www.votervoice.net/NYAPRS/campaigns/124690/respond
Republicans Propose Paring Medicaid Coverage but Steer Clear of Deeper Cuts (excerpts by the Alliance for Rights and Recovery)
The proposal, which is to be considered this week by a key House panel, omits some of the furthest-reaching reductions to the health program but would leave millions without coverage or facing higher costs.
By Margot Sanger-Katz and Catie Edmondson New York Times May 12, 2025
House Republicans released a plan late on Sunday that would cause millions of poor Americans to lose Medicaid health coverage and millions more to pay higher fees when they go to the doctor.
The legislation tries to split the difference between Republicans agitating for deep cuts to Medicaid and those eager to protect their states from changes that could force them to shoulder much higher costs.
The measure reduces federal spending by an estimated $912 billion over the decade and cause 8.6 million people to become uninsured, according to a partial analysis from the Congressional Budget Office that was circulated by Democrats on the committee. Most of those cuts —$715 billion — would come from changes to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.
It excludes several policies under consideration that would create large holes in state budgets and instead focuses on policies that cause Medicaid beneficiaries to pay more fees and complete more paperwork to use their coverage.
The legislation’s remaining savings would come largely from changes in energy policy, including the repeal of two Biden-era regulations that affect car pollution and auto efficiency.
The proposal expectedly underscored the stark differences the parties:
“Republican leadership released this bill under cover of night because they don’t want people to know their true intentions,” Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), the top Energy and Commerce Democrat, said in a statement. “Taking health care away from children and moms, seniors in nursing homes, and people with disabilities to give tax breaks to people who don’t need them is shameful. Democrats have defeated Republican efforts to cut health care before and we can do it again.”
“Democrats will use this as an opportunity to engage in fear-mongering and misrepresent our bill as an attack on Medicaid,” Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Sunday. “In reality, it preserves and strengthens Medicaid for children, mothers, people with disabilities and the elderly — for whom the program was designed.”
Anticipated Impact on Beneficiaries
- Adds a work requirement to Medicaid for poor, childless adults, mandating that they prove they are working 80 hours every month to stay enrolled.
- Requires Medicaid beneficiaries who earn more than the federal poverty limit — around $15,650 for a single person — to pay higher co-payments for doctor visits. Typically, Medicaid requires very limited cost sharing from its beneficiaries, given their low incomes.
- Requires co-payments of $35 for many medical services, in contrast to the $15-25 cost per visit for those receiving private insurance.
- Ratchets up paperwork requirements across the program, by allowing states to check the income and residency of beneficiaries more often, and by permitting them to terminate coverage for people who do not respond promptly. An analysis of the paperwork change published by the Congressional Budget Office last week suggested that it would
- cause 2.3 million people to lose Medicaid coverage, many poor older and disabled people who are also enrolled in Medicare but use Medicaid to cover co-payments they cannot afford.
- cause only 600,000 more Americans to lose any form of health insurance, but it would cause many more to have trouble paying for medical care.
- Prevents owners of expensive homes from obtaining nursing home coverage,
- Bars coverage of gender-affirming care for transgender minors
- Prevents Medicaid from funding health providers that also offer abortion services (aims at Planned Parenthood)
- Reduces federal funding for all childless adults without disabilities to 80 percent from 90 percent in states that subsidize coverage for undocumented individuals.
Impact on States
- The provision most likely to affect state budgets is a change to longstanding rules that allow states to impose taxes on hospitals, nursing homes and other providers and to use various accounting maneuvers to use the taxes to obtain more federal funding. The bill would freeze all state taxes at their current rates, and prevent states from using special related payments to pay hospitals higher prices for Medicaid services than Medicare pays.
- The bill also takes direct aim at a handful of states controlled by Democrats that fund health coverage for undocumented immigrants, who are barred under the law from enrolling in Medicaid.
- The legislation would reduce federal funding for all childless adults without disabilities to 80 percent from 90 percent if the state subsidized coverage for such people. The change would mean significant funding cuts to states including California, New York and Washington unless they eliminated their state programs that enroll undocumented people.
- It also includes several provisions meant to purge the program’s rolls of ineligible immigrants and people who have died.
See the entire article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/us/politics/republicans-medicaid-cuts.html
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NY Health Officials: Half-Million Could Lose Medicaid Under GOP Cuts
By David Robinson | Poughkeepsie Journal | May 5, 2025
More than 500,000 New Yorkers could lose health insurance under Medicaid work requirement proposals being considered by Republicans in Congress, state officials said.
That estimate — which could rise to about 750,000 people losing health insurance, depending on the proposal details — came after the GOP-controlled Congress resurfaced an old idea: requiring many adults on Medicaid to get a job so they can keep their health insurance.
In New York, Medicaid has become even more entrenched in health care, covering about 7 million people, or 29% of the population.
How Would Medicaid Work Requirements Impact NY?
State health officials in New York provided a breakdown of the potential impact of a federal measure imposing work requirements for Medicaid. It noted:
- Of the roughly 7 million New Yorkers covered by Medicaid, there are 3.7 million working-age adults.
- Of those 3.7 million adults, about 2.2 million to 2.6 million would potentially be exempted from Medicaid work requirements through administrative renewal based on their status in other programs, including SNAP, which already requires meeting certain work requirements.
- The remaining 1.1 to 1.5 million adults may include populations that would be exempt — for example, pregnant adults and caretakers. And based on data from other states, at least 50% of these remaining adults are actively seeking or fully employed.
Put simply, anywhere from 500,000 to 750,000 adults who are eligible for and currently enrolled in Medicaid in New York would potentially lose coverage due to imposing work requirements.
At the same time, mandating work reporting requirements would introduce significant administrative burdens, state health officials noted in a statement, adding that has the potential to increase program costs to both enrollees and state Medicaid departments across the country.
Some outside health policy researchers have also estimated Medicaid work requirements could have an even more significant impact in New York, removing coverage for up to nearly 850,000, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The stakes are clear as New York’s handling of Medicaid has resulted in taxpayer-supported spending increases that far outpaced the national average, with New York’s program now spending $3,100 per resident compared to the $1,800 national average, according to the Empire Center, a fiscally conservative Albany think tank.
Do Medicaid work requirements work? What we know
Conservatives who support the idea say a Medicaid work requirement would motivate people to seek employment and potentially secure health insurance through the workplace, saving taxpayers money.
…Among the findings of potential impacts of Medicaid work requirements:
- Many of those losing benefits are actually employed, or should be exempt but lose their benefits anyway, owing to confusing paperwork requirements. Merely lacking internet access made people more susceptible to losing their benefits, one study found, noting meeting compliance reporting obligations is more difficult without reliable internet.
- Any gains in employment or income are minimal. That’s because work requirements fail to address the underlying reasons for unemployment, such as lack of proper job training, reliable transportation, or childcare support, or because too few jobs are available in their areas.
- The Congressional Budget Office in 2023 concluded that Medicaid work requirements would “have a negligible effect on employment status or hours worked by people who would be subject to the work requirements.”
Includes reporting by Ken Alltucker of USA TODAY.
Let Congress know you are opposed to Medicaid cuts at https://www.votervoice.net/NYAPRS/campaigns/124690/respond