more than 40 states<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cThe ACA took a three-pronged approach to increasing access to health coverage \u2014 Medicaid expansion, tax credits to make premiums more affordable for those who lack employer-provided insurance and pre-existing condition protections. The Medicaid expansion has been a key part of reducing the uninsured rate to the lowest levels in history,\u201d said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a research group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Levitt called the 90% federal promise \u201ckey to getting both red and blue states to take\u201d the Medicaid expansion after the Supreme Court made it optional. Lowering it to the traditional rate the feds pay on Medicaid \u201cwould be a huge cost shift to states, and many would have difficulty coming up with the extra money,\u201d he added. \u201cSome states even have triggers that would eliminate the expansion if the match rate is lowered.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Medicaid funding has emerged as one the biggest policy issues Republicans are trying to work through as they craft their party-line bill for Trump’s agenda, which includes extending his 2017 tax cuts, boosting funding for immigration enforcement and the military and raising the debt limit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has laid out an ambitious timeline of passing the bill through the House by Memorial Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Guthrie told NBC News he\u2019s working on finding consensus, given the House GOP\u2019s narrow majority and no hope of winning Democratic support for the package.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPeople say: \u2018This is my red line. I can\u2019t cross it.\u2019 And we say, \u2018OK, where can we meet?\u2019 And that\u2019s what we\u2019re working,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., endorsed the potential Medicaid change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen the Dems expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, they made that percentage match 90-10%. So the federal government is paying 90% of the Medicaid expansion. So what we have talked about is moving that 90% level of the expansion back towards the more traditional levels of 50% to approximately 80%, instead of the 90-10 \u2014 90% being federal, 10% being state \u2014 match,\u201d Scott said last week on Fox News.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd nobody would be kicked off Medicaid as long as the governors decided that they want to continue to fund the program. And so we are going to ask the states to pick up and pay some additional percentage of Medicaid,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some lawmakers cast doubt on the proposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s easy to say. States can\u2019t print money the way they can around here. So it would be very difficult for the state to make up that difference,\u201d said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine. \u201cIt would be very harmful to people. One of the things that people don\u2019t realize is 70% of the nursing home folks in Maine are on Medicaid. … So that kind of cut would be a burden on the state that\u2019d be very hard to meet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Plenty of Republicans have voiced reservations about significant Medicaid cuts, and their votes could make or break the bill\u2019s prospects. Even Trump has promised that reductions in Medicaid funding wouldn\u2019t harm benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said she\u2019s skeptical of unwinding the funding passed under the ACA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ve supported not only the ACA premium subsidies, but Alaska has really seen the direct benefit of Medicaid expansion,\u201d Murkowski said Monday. \u201cThe premium supports have been very important to my state. And the fear amongst many, many is that those go away and people will not be able to afford their health care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey\u2019re still going to have challenges. They\u2019re still going to need care. They\u2019re going to end up in the emergency room,\u201d she added. \u201cSo these are some of the things that Alaskans have been sharing with me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she hasn\u2019t seen the specifics of the Medicaid policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe one thing that I would support are carefully crafted work requirements for able-bodied adults without preschool children,\u201d she told reporters. \u201cBut I want to make sure that we are not depriving seniors, children, low-income families, people with disabilities and our rural hospitals of Medicaid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., said last week on Fox Business that he\u2019s open to work requirements for able-bodied adults, citizenship verification for Medicaid and more frequent eligibility checks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBeyond that, I am not going to consider any changes to cut benefits to anyone. Period,\u201d said Lawler, who represents a politically competitive district that Democrats are targeting in next year’s midterm elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said defeating the broader GOP package is \u201ca matter of life and death at this moment\u201d and an \u201call-hands-on-deck\u201d effort for Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHealth care is under assault by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, the administration and rubber-stamp Republicans in the House and in the Senate. These people, these extremists, they want to take health care away from the American people,\u201d Jeffries told reporters. \u201cIn terms of this FMAP <\/strong>proposal, it\u2019s all part of the same scheme. They want to end Medicaid as we know it. They\u2019re going to hurt children, hurt families, hurt seniors, hurt people with disabilities, close hospitals, shut down nursing homes. And people will die.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nGuthrie said, however, that the 50% floor on Medicaid FMAP outside the expansion population is unlikely to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of negotiation on FMAP,\u201d he said. \u201cI think everything\u2019s on the table till we figure out where 218 [votes] are, but that\u2019ll be a more difficult thing to change.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nbcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 Top Republicans are considering rolling back a major piece of the Affordable Care Act in their massive bill for President Donald Trump’s agenda, exploring savings by slashing how much money the federal government spends to cover the 2010 law’s expansion of Medicaid. Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., the chair of the House Energy and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":41627,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[30417,1274,2372,1580,1230],"class_list":["post-41625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-affordable-care-act","tag-bill","tag-repeal","tag-republicans","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41628,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41625\/revisions\/41628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}