Impact of Trump fund measure Medicaid cuts
Cuts to national spending connected Medicaid could impact hundreds of rural hospitals successful galore states that person elected Republican senators and voted for President Trump, Senate Democrats warned Thursday, citing a database they commissioned of agrarian hospitals successful fiscal distress.
"If Republicans program to walk drastic cuts to Medicaid and Medicare and efficaciously repeal the Affordable Care Act, communities should cognize precisely what they basal to lose," Sen. Ed Markey, the apical Democrat successful the Senate's wellness committee, said successful a statement.
The informing from Senate Democrats, outlined in a letter sent to President Trump and Republican legislature leaders, comes arsenic senators are now wrestling with the fund bundle that Mr. Trump dubbed the "big, beauteous bill," which narrowly passed the House past month.
Budget analysts accidental a slew of changes that the House measure made to Medicaid provisions — which backers reason would people "excesses and abuses" successful the programme — could adhd up to reduced national Medicaid spending by more than $800 billion implicit the adjacent decade, resulting successful 7.8 cardinal more uninsured people.
The American Hospital Association has warned Medicaid cuts being considered by Congress "could person a devastating interaction connected agrarian hospitals," which often look larger shares of patients without wellness insurance.
"Rural hospitals service arsenic captious — and sometimes the sole — root of attraction for agrarian communities," the infirmary lobbying radical says.
Democrats cited a database of at-risk agrarian hospitals that the University of North Carolina's Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research compiled astatine their request.
"If your enactment moves up with these drastic wellness attraction cuts that volition chopped millions of radical disconnected their wellness security coverage, agrarian hospitals volition not get paid for the services they are required by instrumentality to supply to patients. In turn, agrarian hospitals volition look deeper fiscal strain," the Democrats' missive states.
The halfway analyzed information from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to compile a database of agrarian hospitals astatine the highest hazard of fiscal distress, breached down by authorities and legislature district.
"Republican wellness attraction cuts would beryllium felt by agrarian hospitals crossed the country. In Louisiana, 32 agrarian hospitals — oregon a bulk of agrarian hospitals successful the authorities — are serving a precocious attraction of Medicaid patients. A full of 33 hospitals are astatine hazard based connected serving a precocious stock of Medicaid patients, experiencing antagonistic full margins, oregon both," Democrats wrote.
Louisiana is the location authorities of Sen. Bill Cassidy, the apical Republican connected the Senate wellness panel.
The missive besides itemized agrarian hospitals astatine hazard successful Alaska, Kentucky, West Virginia, Alabama and Tennessee.
"Substantial cuts to Medicaid oregon Medicare payments could summation the fig of unprofitable agrarian hospitals and elevate their hazard of fiscal distress. In response, hospitals whitethorn beryllium forced to trim work lines, person to a antithetic benignant of healthcare facility, oregon adjacent altogether," wrote University of North Carolina researchers Mark Holmes, George Pink and Tyler Malone successful their responses to the Democrats.
Alexander Tin is simply a integer newsman for CBS News based successful the Washington, D.C. bureau. He covers national nationalist wellness agencies.
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