Under the newest health care bill which could come to a vote next week, some states including North Carolina stand to lose a lot of federal dollars. That’s according to one of the leading health care consulting groups. It attributes the loss to spending limits on Medicaid and changes in federal subsidies for people buying coverage on the health insurance exchanges.
The Congressional Budget Office which measures how many people could lose coverage under the new health care bill won’t have time to finish crunching the numbers before a potential vote. But Avalere Health, a health care consulting group, analyzed how much money states would lose under the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnsonproposal. Over next nine years the feds would give states $215 billion less. That would mean a one percent cut for North Carolina initially. But Chris Sloan an author of the report, that changes after 2026. That’s when other funding to help people getting insurance on the marketplace could disappear.
Sloan said, “The formula and the way the bill works it drives a lot of that money toward the very low income at the expense of the middle-low income or the lower-middle class group who are getting currently getting some help through the Affordable Care Act.”
Sloan said that’s because federal funding would be tied to how state’s cover the poorest residents. That’s one of the reasons Governor Roy Cooper opposes this bill. He said in a statement North Carolina’s middle class families will be worse off if this passes. Senator Richard Burr supports the bill and Senator Thom Tillis has not yet responded to requests for comment.