As many as 100,000 Alaskans could lose health insurance if budget cuts supported by President Donald Trump and Republicans who control the U.S. House are enacted, according to Juneau’s Bartlett Regional Hospital CEO Joe Wanner and other state health officials.
The Trump administration and House Republicans are backing a spending plan that cuts Medicaid by up to $880 billion during the next decade.
Wanner, during a meeting of Bartlett’s board of directors on Feb. 19, said the cut would affect 72,000 Alaskans who have been added since Medicaid coverage expanded under the Affordable Care Act of 2010, and an additional 23,000 Alaskans who get subsidies for insurance they purchase.
“So there’s about 100,000 people who could lose insurance through some of these changes,” he said.
There were 447 Wrangell households on Medicaid in January, according to the Division of Public Assistance at the Alaska Department of Health. That’s almost half of all the households in town.
The estimate of 100,000 who could be affected statewide is echoed in a letter sent to Alaska’s congressional delegation on Feb. 14 by the Alaska Hospital and Healthcare Association.
“That figure is not meant to shock,” Jared Kosin, the hospital association president and CEO, said in an interview on Feb. 21. “I think it is a possibility, but it’s a possibility in a time where there’s a lot of rapid change and so I think we need to take it seriously.”
Medicaid, a joint federal-state program, is the primary form of health coverage for lower-income Americans and the largest payment source for long-term nursing care.
“Seven in nine Alaska seniors in our nursing homes are on Medicaid. Medicaid helps seniors and disabilities live independently, and it also strengthens our tribal health system and ensures that there’s health care access in rural Alaska,” Anchorage state Rep. Genevieve Mina, chair of the House Health and Social Services Committee, said last week of the U.S. House Republicans’ proposed spending cuts.
The Trump-endorsed spending package by House Republicans seeks to cut $2 trillion over 10 years to help pay for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. The Republican-led Senate is not proposing similar cuts in its budget.
About 250,000 Alaskans are covered under Medicaid, including 72,000 who enrolled under the decade-old expansion that covers nearly all adults with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level, according to the hospital association. House Republicans are seeking to repeal that expansion, which has been implemented by 40 states including Alaska.
The House Republican-led fiscal plan also would end enhanced tax credits for insurance plans purchased in the federal marketplace by 23,000 Alaskans, which are set to expire this year unless extended.
Kosin said while that would not take away those individuals’ insurance outright, “the premiums are going to go up double, if not triple, from what they’re currently paying and that’s just not even possible to afford that.”
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