Hundreds of thousands of D.C. residents are at risk of losing their Medicaid coverage and nutrition benefits under the massive tax and spending bill Republicans pushed through Congress.
Wayne Turnage, deputy mayor for D.C.’s Health and Human Services, discussed the impact of the cuts in an exclusive interview with News4.
About 300,000 D.C. residents rely on Medicaid and about 140,000 receive financial help through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF. Combined, that’s more than 40% of D.C.’s population.
Medicaid work requirements laid out in the Republican-led bill will put 200,000 of D.C.’s Medicaid recipients at risk of losing their health care coverage, according to Turnage.
The legislation requires that Medicaid recipients between 19 and 64 old document 80 hours of work or service each month or risk losing their health care.
“We do not currently have work requirements in the city for Medicaid and so we’re gonna have to execute a fairly complicated program to ensure that people who are meeting the 80 hours can effectively document that and avoid losing coverage. That is the biggest concern that I have. It will bring some cost to implement,” Turnage said.
Changes to the retroactive coverage policy will also impact D.C. Medicaid recipients.
“There’s a loss of retroactive coverage, which I think will be harmful to beneficiaries. Under the current program … we can look back 90 days from your date of application once you’re approved and pay for all of your Medicaid eligible expenses in the 90-day period before you were eligible. That has been reduced to 30 days,” Turnage said.
The policy changes in the so-called “big, beautiful bill” come at a time when D.C. is having to make its own cuts to Medicaid. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s budget, which received preliminary approval from the D.C. Council, will move about 25,000 residents off of Medicaid. Turnage said the District will have a system in place to automatically move those residents to the city’s health exchange program.
Turnage said the federal bill will impact D.C. families who rely on food stamps and TANF benefits.
“The more likely loss of benefits will probably occur on the TANF side of SNAP. That’s where you get actual cash assistance,” Turnage said.
The legislation Congress passed requires states to pay for a portion of SNAP benefit costs, ranging from 5% to 15%, if their payment error rate is at or more than 6%, CNBC reports. Error rates measure the accuracy of states’ eligibility and benefit payments. In fiscal year 2024, states had a 10.9% average payment error rate, with many states over 6%, according to the Department of Agriculture.
D.C.’s error rate is currently between 6% to 7%. Turnage said the District might have to pay tens of millions of dollars if it doesn’t reduce the rate by the bill’s 2028 deadline.
While Turnage is concerned about the changes ahead, he said the city dodged a major bullet when Congress decided not to reduce the federal reimbursement rate to D.C. Medicaid, meaning the amount of funds the federal government contributes to the state-run program.
“That would have been a reduction of over 2.1 billion dollars from the Medicaid program, which would have been almost impossible to, to overcome,” he said.
from Local – NBC4 Washington https://ift.tt/U7dK1WX
0 Comments