On Monday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power,” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) stated that a lowering of the federal reimbursement rate for Medicaid for states, like the 50% one for New York, is off the table for her and several House Republicans.
While discussing spending reductions, Malliotakis stated, “Well, what we have seen is the menu of options, right? And we’re talking about the entire energy and healthcare portfolios. It’s not just Medicaid. It, obviously — and deals with regulations, it deals with broadband spectrum sales, it deals with other components, emission vehicles, things like that that could be offsets.”
She continued, “With the Medicaid piece, we’ve made it very clear to the speaker, to the chairman of this committee, as well as to the president of the United States, that there is a group of us that will not support any package that would diminish, meaning taking individuals who are legally eligible for Medicaid off the rolls. If they are eligible, they need to be able to keep their eligibility. Now, aside from that — specifically, we’re talking about our senior citizens, our people with disabilities, children with developmental disabilities, pregnant women. These are people that we are really laser-focused on. Yes, we can implement work requirements on people that are able-bodied. They should be contributing in this economy and working, that would remove them off of Medicaid and put them on, most likely, private insurance, saving the government money, as well. And, of course, the fraud, getting rid of it, which accounts for roughly $50 billion a year in Medicaid alone. That’s $500 billion over ten years. So, when you’re looking for a savings of roughly $880 billion over ten years, that’s a big chunk of it right there that we’re going to save. And so, we’ve just made very clear that, in terms of reimbursement rates for our states, New York, for example, 50% federal reimbursement, we will not allow that to be lowered. So, that was one thing that we pushed back on, as well as per capita caps on traditional Medicaid, that’s something that we’ve also said is a red line for us. And we’ve received positive feedback from the speaker and a commitment that they’re not going to touch those things.”
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