On Monday, a Republican senator voiced concern that President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” would drastically decrease Medicaid funding, prompting lawmakers to consider new legislation.
The Republican senator from Maine, Susan Collins, warned that legislators would face increasing “pressure” to alter the megabill’s severe cutbacks to Medicaid as she spoke at the Global Health Innovation Forum in Boston at Massachusetts General Hospital.
She also voiced her support for the bill’s other major measures, such as those that would strengthen Medicaid’s work requirement and prolong parts of Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
While it is important to reduce spending on Medicare and Medicaid, Collins said that Americans will suffer as a result of the over $1 trillion in cutbacks to Medicaid.
“They don’t go into effect next year, they go into effect the following year,” he added. “But a year is not going to make any difference at all, and I’m just very concerned that people who need the care aren’t going to get it.”
As soon as “we start seeing Americans getting sicker as a result of this, having delayed treatment because they no longer have the coverage,” Collins said, legislators will have to reevaluate the cutbacks they approved in June.
The states won’t be able to step up and cover this deficit, in my opinion. I simply cannot. States that are quite affluent, she added. “That isn’t going to happen, in my opinion. There will be a lot of pressure on Congress to pass a new law as soon as its consequences are understood. However, we will require the nonexistent study, anecdotes, and proof.
Along with Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky and Republican Thom Tillis of North Carolina, she was one of just three Republicans in the Senate to vote against the massive package in June. At the time, she said that the elimination of Medicaid funding was the main reason she did not support the measure.
Collins took note of the fact that she had informed Senate Republican leaders and White House officials that she would be offering a firm “no” unless the measure was amended before it ever came to the floor for the marathon 29-hour vote-a-rama that would precede ultimate approval in the upper chamber.
Cuts that would impact rural hospitals were one of ten issues she brought up with leaders and the government. According to her, one of Maine’s thirty-two rural hospitals has just closed.
“We have five that are teetering on the brink of closure because they’re already in trouble, because the Medicaid reimbursements are not high enough, and also because of population changes,” according to her.
A $50 billion rural hospital fund was included to help offset the broader cuts, which was a small victory for Collins and other skeptics of the Medicaid cuts, like Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. Collins also promised to pressure Mehmet Oz, director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to quickly dispose of this funding.
Still, she was concerned that hospitals would end up paying more of the healthcare costs in a state like Maine, where around 31% of the population relies on Medicaid.
“These cuts, I worry, are going to be devastating for states like Maine, for the people who rely on it,” added Collins. “But you know, a lot of those individuals are still going to show up in the hospital emergency room.”
“They won’t have been getting the care that they need to keep them out of the hospital emergency room,” said the doctor. “They’re going to be coming to you with their problems, and they’re not going to be covered by Medicaid, and the problem with that is it’s going to be uncompensated care for hospitals.”