What Happens When You Cut Medicaid? - Texas

New from AP today on the time Texas cut 350 million from Medicaid:

Some Texas children with special needs like Addison have lost critical services since the state implemented $350 million in Medicaid cuts to speech, occupational and physical therapy in December. In Texas, reimbursement offered to providers fell up to 50 percent for certain therapy procedures, said Rachel Hammon, president of Texas Association of Homecare and Hospice. Clinics closed and therapists quit.

The Texas cuts are separate from Republican proposals now before Congress, which academics say could cut federal Medicaid spending as part of a law to replace the Affordable Care Act. But the fallout could eventually be similar if some form of what’s been approved in the U.S. House, and is under consideration in the Senate, becomes law, said Elizabeth Burak, the senior program director of Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for Children and Families

The Texas Legislature voted in 2015 to cut the state’s Medicaid reimbursement for pediatric acute therapy services, which effectively capped how much providers can be paid. Proponents of the cuts argued that Texas’ previous reimbursement rates were too high, sometimes even encouraging fraud.

In related news, my piece on the history of Republican attacks on Medicaid was picked up by the Dallas Morning News. My inbox has been lived.