Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Administration Wants To Skirt Congress With Medicaid Block Grant Plan That Would Achieve Long-Held Conservative Dream
The Wall Street Journal: Trump Administration Plans Effort To Let States Remodel Medicaid
The Trump administration is readying guidance that could let states remodel their Medicaid programs to more closely resemble block grant proposals favored by Republicans during their failed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, according to people familiar with the discussions. (Armour, 1/11)
Politico: Trump Wants To Bypass Congress On Medicaid Plan
The Trump administration is quietly devising a plan bypassing Congress to give block grants to states for Medicaid, achieving a longstanding conservative dream of reining in spending on the health care safety net for the poor. Three administration sources say the Trump administration is drawing up guidelines on what could be a major overhaul of Medicaid in some states. Instead of the traditional open-ended entitlement, states would get spending limits, along with more flexibility to run the low-income health program that serves nearly 75 million Americans, from poor children, to disabled people, to impoverished seniors in nursing homes. (Pradhan and Diamond, 1/11)
Meanwhile —
Columbus Dispatch: Unsolved Mystery: Why 700,000 Ohioans Were Removed From Medicaid Coverage
More than 700,000 Ohioans were removed from the state’s Medicaid program in just the first 10 months of 2018.Franklin County had the most disenrollments, with nearly 90,000 losing the health-care coverage from January through October, the most recent data available show. But no one quite knows why such a huge shift took place in the state-federal program for low-income Ohioans. (Candisky, 1/12)
