Dingell: GOP Legislation Will Block Access to Medicaid and CHIP

Statement

Today, U.S. Representative John D. Dingell (D-MI15) issued the following statement in opposition to H.R. 1683, The Safety Flexibility Act, calling it the latest GOP effort to limit access on the Children's' Health Insurance program (CHIP) and Medicaid Maintenance-of-Effort (MOE) provisions. Yesterday, House and Senate Republicans unveiled this legislation that would allow states to cut Medicaid enrollment.

"I am outraged today at the GOP's efforts to repeal the Maintenance-of-Effort provisions for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. The inside-the-beltway claim that this repeal helps to curtail public spending on health care because of our swelling deficit is simply not true or a well thought out argument. I, like many of my colleagues, believe drastic measures must be put in place to reduce America's debt, and many of us are rolling up our sleeves to get our out-of-control spending back on track. However, limiting access to critical health programs such as Medicaid and CHIP is not an appropriate way to get our budget out of the red. In fact, the GOP should be ashamed at the thought of turning their backs on the poor and pulling the rug out from under the only safety net some of these people have. Repealing the CHIP and Medicaid MOE provisions will hurt essential health coverage for thousands and thousands of American children, working families, and seniors.

"If the CHIP and Medicaid maintenance-of-effort provisions are repealed, states can indiscriminately roll back coverage in their CHIP programs, cap or reduce enrollment among eligible children, or even eliminate them. This is unfair because people rely on these programs to maintain basic health; repealing these provisions puts our nation's public health at risk and will ultimately end up costing taxpayers more money in the long-run.

"Under the health reform law, the Congressional Budget Office predicts that 16 million of the 32 million Americans who are eligible to gain coverage under the health reform law will be covered through Medicaid. This prediction is unattainable, however, if millions of current Medicaid beneficiaries lose coverage in the next few years because of this GOP bill. We cannot allow this to happen; children, families, and seniors rely on these programs to keep from becoming sick and destitute.

"I also worry about how this capricious cut will negatively impact the budgeting for states. Many states' bottom lines are already in the red. If states curtail Medicaid eligibility now, they will have to increase their Medicaid budgets by much greater amounts when the Medicaid expansion takes effect in 2014, because they will have to add back the beneficiaries they dropped in the interim.

"Currently, the federal government is set to pay the costs new beneficiaries made eligible by the Affordable Care Act in 2014 (and the following two years), and most of these costs after that. But our federal budgeting formula does not account for the people states may drop from their state Medicaid programs after enactment of the ACA. An arbitrary repeal of this magnitude is worse than ridiculous, it is harmful. The GOP should be ashamed of themselves and I urge them to reevaluate their proposal."

Source