The hammer blows are coming

How to think about big changes to Medicaid

Your business has 3 really large customers; the second largest is about to drastically cut its spending. What are you going to do?

Three things:

• try to make a lot more $ from remaining customers,

• slash your workforce and operational costs,

• if/when those don’t work, go belly up.

That, dear readers, is the future of healthcare in rural and small town America.

The Three Hammer Blows

GOP Budget cut

“…the House budget plan’s $880 billion cut to federal health spending almost certainly must come from Medicaid — there’s nowhere else to find it,” Bruce Siegel, MD, president and CEO of America’s Essential Hospitals, said.

“Just as certain: A cut that deep would be disastrous for working families and children in small-town America, where Medicaid means health, productivity and financial stability. It also would devastate our safety net and the essential hospitals at its core.” [emphasis added]

Medicaid work requirements

Second, GOP legislation requiring many Medicaid recipients to work [despite all evidence this requirement is impossible to implement and grossly unfair] will likely drop about 5 million Americans from coverage.

From Beckers’

These coverage reductions are likely to stem from a lack of awareness or confusion about the new policy, rather than from enrollees failing to work.

Medicaid disenrollment

The GOP is about to cut Medicaid coverage for 11 million Americans.

Healthcare spending will be cut by $99 billion.

Hospitals will see a net loss of $50 billion - $32 billion from lower Medicaid reimbursement and $19 billion in unreimbursed healthcare for the uninsured.

From WRJF - Eight states - Arizona, Indiana, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Oregon would see healthcare spending drop by more than 6%.

This will hit rural communities especially hard.

Medicaid is a major payer in many rural communities; In fifteen states more than one of every five working-age adults are covered by Medicaid. You can find how this will affect your community here.

What does this mean for you?

If you think these blows won’t affect workers’ comp and health insurance, you aren’t thinking.