Medicaid hearing planned

Statement

As Vice Chair for Insular Affairs on the House Natural Resources Committee, I am putting together a hearing on the Medicaid funding crisis facing all the U.S. insular areas. One-time Obamacare funds for American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the Marianas will no longer be available after this year. Each jurisdiction will have to make do just with the block grant it received before Obamacare was enacted in 2010. The Marianas received $109,258,678 from Obamacare. The Marianas annual block grant is only $6,700,000. Holding a hearing is one tool we have in Congress to make sure this "Medicaid cliff" at the end of the year gets action. We cannot let anyone forget how many people in the Marianas and all the other insular areas depend on Medicaid for their health care, and how important Medicaid revenue is to the hospital and the other providers everyone in our islands goes to for care. Medicaid accounts for over one-quarter of hospital revenues. I expect to announce an exact date for the hearing shortly.

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