Over the next four years, Oregon will need to come up with nearly $1.3 billion to keep its current Medicaid system functioning due to cuts and restrictions from the GOP’s 2025 federal tax and spending law, state health officials told lawmakers Wednesday.
This is $325 million a year, about half of what Oregon spends to provide free healthcare to illegal immigrants. I’m not kidding.
…the GOP’s 2025 federal tax and spending law…slashed roughly $1 trillion over the next decade for Medicaid while instituting resource-intensive work requirements and more frequent eligibility reviews that are costing states hundreds of millions of dollars to implement.
Basically, the people don’t get to freeload any more if they’re able-bodied.
Health authority officials now say they are improving technology so people can upload payroll documents for quick verification and helping people get enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which have similar requirements.
Good?
They said the agency anticipates it will inform 600,000 people by late September about upcoming requirements to prove they complete 80 hours monthly of work, volunteering or education. Those requirements apply to adults aged 19 to 64. Parents or caregivers of children under 14 do not have to complete the work requirements, nor do people with medical conditions that severely impact their ability to complete work.
Still struggling to see why any of this is a bad thing. We want social safety nets to support citizens who need it not act as a taxpayer-funded goody basket for everyone.
In Oregon, around 200,000 people are estimated to lose their Medicaid coverage under the federal law as it is implemented over the next few years, according to researchers at Princeton University. By the end of 2027, the health authority says most Oregonians on Medicaid — known as the Oregon Health Plan — will be subject to more frequent eligibility reviews every six months, rather than every two years, which could lead to people losing their coverage due to increased paperwork and administrative burdens.
Sure, but won’t even more people lose coverage because they’ve become actually ineligible? It doesn’t seem unreasonable to check eligibility every six months whereas every two years does seem unreasonable.
The new federal law also changed eligibility for immigrants with certain forms of legal status, including refugees, asylees and survivors of domestic violence or human trafficking. These individuals previously qualified for programs such as Medicaid and SNAP, but the new law made them ineligible.
The health authority said that by October, around 7,000 people who fall into those categories will be moved onto the state’s Healthier Oregon program, which pays for Medicaid coverage using state funds to cover low-income Oregonians who would otherwise qualify for the federal program were it not for their immigration status.
Healthier Oregon is Oregon’s $600 million a year program that provides free healthcare to, almost exclusively, illegal immigrants.
Oregon is the only state in the nation that offers such a program to low-income adults and children who do not have permanent legal status without restrictions on coverage or enrollment, according to the nonprofit research group Kaiser Family Foundation.
How about we concentrate on (1) providing health care to truly needy Oregon citizens instead of all-comers and (2) getting as many people off of Medicaid (and Oregon’s version of it) as possible?