'Death Warrant': New Fears Emerge as GOP Medicaid Cuts Come Closer to Reality

Several reports published on Tuesday highlighted the negative impacts that are expected from Medicaid cuts included in the Republicans' budget law.

The Medicaid cuts, which passed this past summer as part of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, are estimated to total $1 trillion over the next decade and are projected to kick more than 10 million Americans off their health insurance. However, the cuts are also expected to have several other knock-on effects that could negatively impact the entire American healthcare system.

Rhian Lubin, a reporter for The Independent, recently traveled to Louisiana, where she met a 28-year-old mother named Hannah McDaniel who relies on Medicaid to pay for treatment for her two-year-old son, Myles, who suffers from an incurable heart defect.

As McDaniel explained to Lubin, she is already inundated with paperwork required to keep Medicaid paying for Myles' lifesaving care, and she fears that the new work requirements added by Republicans will only add to the burden and increase the risk that her son's care will be cut off.

"If we make one wrong decision as the parents of a critically ill child, that could be the end of it," said McDaniel, who added that when the GOP passed its budget package it felt like "the government had signed Myles' death warrant."

Lubin wrote that these cuts will make it especially hard for patients who live in rural communities, where local hospitals have for years been under financial strain and are in greater danger of closing thanks to the GOP's budget.

"Any cuts to that program are going to trickle down and impact children, whether that's pediatric practices who depend on Medicaid to be able to stay open or children’s hospitals," West Virginia pediatrician Lisa Costello told Lubin.

The impact of these cuts is projected to be felt nationwide, as The Idaho Statesman reported that nursing homes and hospice care facilities in the Gem State are also bracing for a catastrophic loss of funding.

The report highlighted Table Rock Senior Living at Park Place, an assisted living facility in the city of Nampa, which will see a cut in its reimbursement rates paid out by Idaho's Department of Health and Welfare in response to the GOP's Medicaid cuts. Gary Connell, who runs Table Rock Senior Living, told The Idaho Statesman that such cuts are "going to cause a lot of havoc" at both his facility and senior residences across the state.

Expected cuts to Medicaid reimbursement rates in the state are likely to force more facilities to decline Medicaid recipients as patients, which would in turn place higher burdens on emergency rooms.

"We're going to see serious access issues now, and then, what’s going to happen? They're going to go to the hospital emergency room," Democratic Idaho state Sen. Melissa Wintrow told The Idaho Statesman. "We can't refuse people at the hospital emergency room, and that's a higher cost of care, which means the legislature is going to take it on the chin in the end."

Over in North Carolina, local public radio station WHQR reported that dentists in the state are similarly fearful of lower reimbursement rates that would force them to cut off Medicaid recipients from care.

Before the GOP passed its budget law, North Carolina lawmakers were actually considering a bill that would have boosted the reimbursement rate from 35% to 46%. But with less money projected to come in from the federal government over the next decade, they abandoned the effort.

Dr. Robert Stowe, a dentist based in Winston-Salem, said that the North Carolina state legislature's current plan to slash reimbursement rates by an additional 3% this year would likely be a tipping point for many healthcare providers.

"You got a system that the reimbursement is so low now that you have providers who are seeing Medicaid dental patients that they're taking a loss on already," he explained to WHQR. "Then you're going to cut that fee by 3%—it's just untenable."

Finally, Ohio Capital Journal reported that the Medicaid cuts could come at great expense for many low-income Ohio military veterans who rely on the program.

According to the report, roughly 10% of US veterans use Medicaid for services for which they aren't eligible to receive through the US Department of Veterans Affairs, including some mental health treatment.

Dr. Forrest Faison, the former surgeon general of the United States Navy, told Ohio Capital Journal that many veterans who depend on Medicaid "because of job issues, disability, PTSD" may fall through the cracks due to the Medicaid cuts. He also emphasized that the cuts could fall particularly hard on Medicaid recipients in rural Ohio.

"A lot of these veterans, especially in Ohio, live in rural areas," he said, "where even if you've got some benefits, you may not have the services available."