Washington D.C — A new report from STAT News highlights the devastating impact that Republican cuts to Medicaid are having on patients, doctors, and hospital systems nationwide, particularly in rural areas. The article points out that, thanks to congressional Republicans’ Medicaid cuts, many rural health clinics and hospitals will be forced to cut back on services or close entirely. A spokesperson for one of Maine’s largest health systems featured in the article even stated that, “some services that we provide today will either look different or won’t be offered.”
It is a blunt statement that highlights an unavoidable truth: Republicans in Congress sold out millions of Americans’ access to health care, risked patients’ lives, jeopardized rural hospitals’ ability to serve their communities, and raised everyone’s health care costs — all so they could give millionaires and billionaires another tax break. It’s time that Republicans in Congress undo these disastrous cuts and start fighting for working families across the country.
Stat News: How Trump’s cuts are reshaping America’s health system.
Key Points:
- Last year, Republicans set American health care on a new path: They slashed $1 trillion from expected Medicaid funding over the next decade and allowed tens of billions of dollars in annual insurance subsidies to expire.
- Many parts of the health care system are already racing to prepare. The scramble is most intense where the cuts are projected to land the hardest: rural states.
- Maine, for example, has the nation’s highest proportion of its population living in rural areas and an above-average share of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. The federal government’s planned retreat in health care has state leaders on edge — and planning a barrage of changes to how they deliver care and how they make money from it.
- “We will look different moving forward,” said Lisa Harvey-McPherson, vice president of government relations at Northern Light Health, one of Maine’s large health systems. “Some services that we provide today will either look different or won’t be offered.”
- Maine offers a window into what could be ahead for a health system increasingly squeezed by cost, revenue, and demand. The state has the oldest average population, with a high proportion of rural and government-covered patients, a particular concern for lawmakers considering the impact of the policy.
- Trampas Hutches, president of the Mountain Region for the system MaineHealth, said the state is a “canary in the coal mine” for the country: “The things that we’re experiencing today are the things that people will be experiencing soon behind us.”
- In Maine, and across the U.S., hospitals and health systems are pursuing a number of strategies. Most are taking a multifaceted approach, which may include relying more on philanthropy, squeezing more money out of employer-sponsored insurance plans or drugmakers, cutting services that aren’t billable, fighting for the money in the new Rural Health Transformation Fund, or boosting lobbying efforts to roll back the law that cut funding in the first place.
- More extreme measures are also on the table. Cutting services and closing facilities is a possibility for many systems — and some have already begun to do so.
- “The outlook is not good. We think the outlook is going to get worse if Congress doesn’t reverse cuts to Medicaid,” said James Jarvis, president of the Maine Medical Association. “How do we take care of a population if we don’t have the resources needed to do that?”
- The Medicaid cuts could mean about a 1% drop in annual revenue for Maine hospitals. That could tip several facilities in the state — many of which operate at margins less than 1% — into a loss, or make an existing negative margin even more dire.
- Every health care leader in Maine who spoke with STAT said they expected the state to end up with fewer hospital services once the cuts are fully enacted.
- Reductions in hospital services are already having an impact, Norman Dinerman, the medical director of LifeFlight of Maine, said. He recalled one instance in which a newborn died because the mother went into labor too far from the medical care she needed.
- Nationwide, some 7.6 million Americans are expected to lose coverage because of the Medicaid reforms.
- Ordinarily, providers might steer patients who are no longer eligible for Medicaid to individual marketplace plans. But as the cuts are set to take place, lawmakers also failed to renew enhanced subsidies for coverage, raising the cost of insurance for individuals. So far, about 3 million Americans have dropped coverage since the subsidies expired.
- The impact is twofold. Patients avoided needed care because of the cost, only to show up in emergency rooms when they become seriously ill. Clinicians are left to provide this intensive care, without getting paid.
- “The capabilities in the little hospitals just keep declining,” Judge, the founding executive director [of LifeFlight of Maine], said. “Demand is going to keep going up.”
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About Unrig Our Economy
Unrig Our Economy is a national campaign to fix the rules of our economy to make it work for working people. We know that when the middle class does well, all of us do well — which is why we’re fighting on behalf of working Americans and holding corporations, their wealthy executives, and the politicians who enable them accountable.