WASHINGTON — The House Republican budget would leave up to 44 million more low-income people uninsured as the federal government cuts states’ Medicaid funding by about one-third over the next 10 years, nonpartisan groups said in a report issued Tuesday.
The analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Urban Institute concluded that Medicaid’s role as the nation’s safety net health care program would be “significantly compromised “… with no obvious alternative to take its place,” if the GOP budget is adopted.
The plan passed by House Republicans last month on a party-line vote calls for sweeping health care changes, potentially even more significant than President Barack Obama’s insurance overhaul. So far, most of the attention has gone to the Republican proposal to overhaul Medicare. But Medicaid also would be transformed.
The Republican budget has no chance of passing the Democrat-led Senate, or being signed into law by Obama. But individual components could advance as part of debt-reduction talks between Vice President Joe Biden and congressional leaders.
A spokesman for the author of the GOP budget, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, challenged the study’s assumptions. The Republican plan will allow Medicaid to grow “at a sustainable rate, so that the health care safety net will be there for those that need it most,” said Conor Sweeney.
Medicaid is a federal-state partnership that covers more than 60 million low-income children and parents, seniors, including most nursing home residents, and disabled people of any age. Under the GOP plan, Medicaid would be converted from an open-ended program in which the federal government pays about 60 percent of the cost of services, into a block grant that would give each state a fixed sum of money.
