House Passes Protecting the Medicaid Safety Net Act
April 23rd, 2008 by Jesse LeeOn March 3rd, 2008 the Oversight Committee released a report, “The Administration’s Medicaid Regulations: State-By-State Impacts.” The report examined seven Administration-imposed Medicaid regulations which, if implemented, would slash federal Medicaid funding to states for vital programs and services by about $18 billion over the next five years. They would reverse longstanding Medicaid policies and eliminate federal payments for a variety of critical Medicaid functions. As a result, they would put in jeopardy needed services and protections for millions of vulnerable beneficiaries, as well as support for critical safety net institutions in states that are financially strapped.
Full report (pdf) | Summaries of state repsonses (pdf) | Interactive map
This bipartisan Protecting the Medicaid Safety Net Act places a moratorium until March 2009 on these regulations, and passed today by a vote of 349-62 after being reported by the Energy and Commerce Committee by a unanimous vote of 46 to 0 and receiving support from all 50 Governors. Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman spoke in favor of the bill yesterday:
Chairman Waxman: “The Oversight Committee held hearings on this matter. We heard testimony from public and teaching hospital administrators, emergency room physicians, child welfare worker and a school nurse and they explained how the regulations would shift costs to states and localities and what that cost would mean for access to services for beneficiaries. We also heard from a representative from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which issued these regulations. And since Medicaid is a federal-state program, one would think that when the federal government changes the rules, as these regulations would do, it would first try to determine what the impact of these changes would be on the different states. Well, we followed up with the head of the CMS for Medicaid and he told us that he had not done a state-by-state specific analysis of the impact and he had no plans to do such an analysis…” |