Analysts: Pennsylvania loses billions under health care bill
HARRISBURG (AP) – Pennsylvania would be one of the states hit the hardest under U.S. Senate legislation designed to take federal health care subsidies provided under former President Barack Obama’s 2010 law and redistribute them among states, independent analysts said.
The legislation, due for a vote next week, would give Pennsylvania two years to figure out how to provide health care, long-term nursing care or dependent care for more than 3 million people, or one-fourth of all Pennsylvania residents, according to top officials in Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration.
But the state would have fewer federal health care dollars at its disposal, according to analysts, including the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation and Avalere Health.
“We’re left having to decide where we’re going to cut services or who is no longer going to have access to those services and how much we pay providers,” Teresa Miller, Wolf’s acting human services secretary, said in an interview Friday.
Pennsylvania would lose billions of federal health care dollars, under the proposal, while other states would get billions in new federal dollars, analysts said.
From 2020-26, Pennsylvania could see a decrease of about $12 billion in health care funding for a Medicaid program that currently costs more than $20 billion a year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Avalere Health, a health care consulting firm, projected that the state would lose $6 billion in health care funding over that same period.
Pennsylvania is one of 31 states that expanded Medicaid’s income guidelines under Obama’s 2010 law and received a more generous federal subsidy to help pay for the new coverage. Some states – such as Texas and Georgia – that did not expand Medicaid’s income guidelines would actually receive more federal health care dollars through 2027, according to the analysts.
In a letter sent Friday, Wolf urged Pennsylvania’s two U.S. senators, Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Pat Toomey, to oppose the bill.
“In addition to forcing our seniors and those with chronic illness to pay more for less, this legislation shifts significant financial responsibility on to states,” Wolf wrote.
Toomey hasn’t said whether he supports the legislation. Casey said he opposes it.