Families USA Brief Warns Against Medicaid Per Capita Caps
Families USA recently released an issue brief on proposed “Medicaid per capita caps”. Under these proposals, the federal government would cap its payments to individual states based on the number of Medicaid enrollees. Currently, each state runs its own Medicaid program using state dollars and the federal government contributes by paying at up to 50% of the state’s cost for their traditional Medicaid program and even more for a Medicaid expansion program.
According to Families USA, under a Medicaid per capita cap structure, “[S]tates would still get an extra federal payment for each beneficiary who is added to the program, but that payment would be limited to a preset amount per person.” According to the brief, this change could “severely reduce state funding” depending on how the federal government sets the caps.
For example, the brief describes a scenario where the federal government set the per capita payment for seniors based on the average national spending. In this scenario, states that have Medicaid spending below the national average would receive more federal support and states that have spending above the national average would receive less, leading to cuts to their Medicaid programs and decreased flexibility in how they administer Medicaid benefits.
http://familiesusa.org/product/how-capita-caps-medicaid-would-hurt-states
