Federal rule could take $8.4B from Texas Medicaid

Palestine Herald-Press
Ali Linan CNHI Texas statehouse reporter
June 8, 2023

AUSTIN — A bipartisan group of lawmakers denounced a federal rule that could cut approximately $8.4 billion from Texas Medicaid funding.

In February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a memo that looked to end payment agreements between Texas and hospitals within the state. In order to pay for Medicaid costs, Texas taxes hospitals. Then, the state gives hospitals funding it receives from the federal government to cover the incurred taxes. The proposed CDC change would make this illegal.

“For 40 years, we've had a good system where the state and the federal government cooperate with health care providers to provide care, (but) because of changes proposed by unelected bureaucrats, this whole system is in jeopardy,” said state Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, during a press conference Wednesday. “Texas has relied on this system and built our safety around it and we can't have the rug pulled out from under us at this point."

Faith leaders also condemned the move who said under the proposed change, money would be taken from hospitals. If hospitals can no longer recoup money lost from seeing indigent patients, it will stop doing so.

“Who here doesn't want a hospital there when you need the hospital? That's the issue, and that's why this is so important,” said Father Mark Hamlet with the Texas Catholic Conference.

Texas has the largest percentage of uninsured residents with 18.4% going without health coverage.

While Texas Democrats have long fought to expand Medicaid in Texas, arguing that without doing so, the state is leaving millions of dollars in federal funding on the table, state Republicans continue to refuse the measure.

Even so, Democratic lawmakers said they saw the move by the CDC as coercion, using the agency to put pressures on Texas and other states that have yet to expand the Affordable Care Act to do so.

State Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, said this approach will only have a negative impact on low-income Texans who rely on Medicaid to cover their medical costs.

“We cannot allow the federal government to use our healthcare system that is already pretty much maxed out because of the pandemic to use that as leverage and hold our healthcare system hostage, to hold our poor people who are in poverty as hostage,” Hinojosa said. “While we support (the expansion of Medicaid), this is not the way to do it.”