Medicaid Redux: Graham Cassidy Again

Where Medicaid is concerned, the latest version of Graham Cassidy, made public on September 24, 2017, retains the contours of the earlier version.  There are a couple of narrow changes, one of which adds to the list of potentially significant legal complications with the draft bill. What Stays The Same Like its predecessor, the draft would fundamentally alter the federal/state financial relationship Medicaid. The two most obvious changes from current law involve capping federal contributions to the traditional program and ending the Affordable Care Act’s federal Medicaid funding for the expansion population. But the scope of the one-sided federal transformation in Medicaid’s historic financial ground rules goes well beyond the draft’s two most striking features.  In numerous other ways, the draft upends over a half-century of policy regarding the availability of federal funding to states to meet the health care needs of their most indigent populations—from giving vast new discretion to the HHS Secretary to bar federal funding for totally permissible state spending decisions under federal law (such as public health emergencies) to further denying states’ ability to generate their share of total Medicaid expenditures through lawful taxes. Whether such a one-sided, dramatic, changing of the rules regarding the federal government’s historic financial commitment to financing health care for medically indigent populations passes constitutional muster in the wake ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Costs and Spending Following the ACA Insurance and Coverage Medicaid and CHIP Source Type: blogs