WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Tuesday night passed a spending blueprint that would extend tax cuts and almost certainly reduce Medicaid, the government insurance program for low-income families, pregnant women and others.
Alaska Congressman Nick Begich, like nearly all Republicans, voted for the House budget.
He was not available for an interview Wednesday.
On the other side of the Capitol, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski is making the case to Senate leaders that the House budget cuts to health care programs could hit hard in Alaska, where one of every three residents is insured through Medicaid.
“Our assessment of it is that the impact, once again, to Alaska, if we see the kinds of cuts that are being floated over on the House right now, could be devastating to Alaska,” she said. “So I'm doing my homework on it and getting good, solid numbers, but I am, I'm alerting folks that this could be very problematic for us.”
At an entirely different Capitol — the Alaska State Capitol — lawmakers from both parties said cuts to Medicaid could exacerbate a budget deficit that’s already estimated at more than half a billion dollars between this year and next.
“We believe that the cut to Alaska under the numbers best known at this time would be $1.15 billion and that as many as 60,000 Alaskans, and I suspect more, would fall off the rolls,” state House Finance Committee Co-Chair Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, said Wednesday.
House Health and Social Services Committee Chair Genevieve Mina, D-Anchorage, said the program is especially important for the state’s most vulnerable populations, like children and elders.
“One in three kids in Alaska are on Medicaid. Seven in nine Alaskan seniors in our nursing homes are on Medicaid. Medicaid helps seniors and (people with) disabilities live independently, and it also strengthens our tribal health system,” Mina said.
The U.S. House budget doesn’t specifically make cuts to Medicaid, but it instructs the House committee that oversees Medicaid and Medicare to find at least $880 billion to cut, and budget experts say it’s impossible to do that without reducing health care coverage. Cuts to Medicaid would require states to make up the difference, or reduce coverage for beneficiaries.
Murkowski said other spending vulnerable to House budget cuts are the subsidies available through the Affordable Care Act that help families buy health insurance. She said it’s costly to have more uninsured people.
“What happens is people are still going to get sick and … have babies, and they go to the emergency room, and we're all paying for it,” she said. “It's not getting any cheaper here.”
The House budget calls for total spending cuts of $2 trillion over the next decade. It also calls for tax cuts that would reduce revenues by $4.5 trillion. The only Republican to vote against it, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, said he couldn’t vote for a budget that would increase the deficit by more than $2 trillion.
The Senate and House have to agree on a budget resolution, and then congressional committees go to work specifying which cuts to make.
