Commentary: The proposed cuts to Medicaid in the Trump administration’s budget for fiscal year 2019 would prevent hundreds of thousands of New Mexicans from accessing healthcare. The budget, if approved by Congress, would cut Medicaid by $1.4 trillion dollars between 2019-2028; eliminate critical funding for Medicaid expansion, which provides over 250,000 New Mexicans with healthcare coverage; and end subsidies that help individuals and families when buying insurance through the marketplace.
“The drastic cuts to Medicaid would make healthcare unaffordable for millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of New Mexicans,” said Abuko D. Estrada, attorney for the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty. “After handing out tax cuts to the richest households, the administration now wants to cut Medicaid by over a trillion dollars in the next decade. This would devastate New Mexico’s budget or force our state to ration healthcare to children, the elderly, people with disabilities, pregnant women, and low-income adults.”
The budget proposes the same cuts to Medicaid as last year’s bills in Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It would cut funding for Medicaid and restructure the program into a per capita cap system. This would give New Mexico a set amount of Medicaid funding to spend per person rather than a federal match for the state’s actual costs. If New Mexico’s Medicaid costs grow faster than the cap amount, the state would be forced to make deep cuts to Medicaid benefits, services, and even eligibility.
A study last year conducted by the UNM Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Center found that the combined Medicaid cuts could cost New Mexico more than $400 million per year or cause more than 250,000 people to lose coverage.
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The New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty is dedicated to advancing economic and social justice through education, advocacy, and litigation. We work with low-income New Mexicans to improve living conditions, increase opportunities, and protect the rights of people living in poverty.