The Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion resulted in 40 of the 50 states (and the District of Columbia) expanding their Medicaid programs because of the health reform law’s promise of additional federal funding to help pay for care for the expansion population.
But now, with Congress and the new administration contemplating spending cuts that may include reductions in the federal financial commitment to Medicaid, a number of states may soon reverse those Medicaid expansions.
Expansion repeal efforts are already underway in Idaho, Montana, and South Dakota.
Nine states – Arizona, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Utah, and Virginia – expanded their Medicaid programs but included in their expansion laws a provision that would automatically reverse that expansion if the federal government reduced its share of the cost of caring for the Medicaid expansion population.
Three more states – Idaho, Iowa, and New Mexico – have laws that require the federal government to initiate cost-cutting measures in Medicaid if it reduces the federal financial commitment to the program.
Two states, Arkansas and Idaho, are pursuing legislation that would impose a work requirement on Medicaid participants.
And deliberations in Alabama about expanding that state’s Medicaid program have ground to a halt.
Cuts in Medicaid eligibility would unquestionably affect the health of millions of Americans – and providers of all types that serve them because those providers would face the prospect of receiving less, little, or no compensation for some of the care they deliver.
Learn more about the possible reversal of Medicaid expansion and its implications from the Stateline article “Health insurance for millions could vanish as states put Medicaid expansion on chopping block.”