New reporting has revealed that House Republicans’ proposed Medicaid cuts could cost the state nearly $1.9 billion over the next two years and kick more than 300,000 Nevadans off their health insurance, doubling the state’s uninsured rate. In response, GOP Assembly Minority Leader said he was “not concerned about how the federal budget cuts could impact Nevadans”, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal, and Joe Lombardo told the Nevada Independent he doesn’t have a contingency plan, offering no solution to the disruption potential cuts could cause working families.
See more below:
Anchor: “Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager warns cuts to Medicaid alone could approach $2 billion [and] says the state simply cannot afford to step up and fill that gap.”
Nevada Independent: Congressional GOP’s proposed Medicaid cut could cost Nevada $1.9 billion
2/20/25
Key points:
- As congressional Republicans consider massive Medicaid cuts, state officials indicated that a proposal to strip away a federal matching rate for a large group of low-income people could lead to a nearly $1.9 billion revenue loss for Nevada over the next two years.
- The details about the revenue loss came Wednesday in response to top state Senate Democrats’ queries about the effects potential Medicaid cuts would have on the state. Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas) noted during a meeting in early February that the state has to be prepared if the Trump administration cuts Medicaid, which serves 1 in 4 Nevadans — 800,000 people.
- “Cutting those services would be extremely detrimental,” Cannizzaro said. “Should that happen outside of a legislative session, [that would put this body] into a place where we would have to come back into this building to cut significantly budgets that we have, because that federal funding is incredibly important to how it is that we are providing those services.”
- State lawmakers will meet next Wednesday to discuss the proposed cuts.
- Republican President Donald Trump’s stance on Medicaid cuts is unclear. He had promised his administration would not cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, but later endorsed a House budget proposal Wednesday that would likely lead to $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid, though specific details on the cuts are still being considered.
- Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV) delivered an address to lawmakers Wednesday raising the alarm on the proposed Medicaid cuts by House Republicans and the downstream effect on the state’s budget.
- “We can’t afford the capital costs – and we can’t afford the human toll either,” he said about the proposed cuts.
- The federal government covers 90 percent of the costs of Medicaid for the “expansion population,” but one Republican proposal under consideration would drop that federal support to the state’s usual federal matching Medicaid rate, which for Nevada hovers around 60 percent.
- If that happens, and if Nevada were to drop coverage for people insured through the expansion in response, about 312,000 Nevadans would be disenrolled in the next nine years — a roughly 42 percent enrollment decrease, reporting from health care policy group KFF indicates.
- The KFF analysis also shows that if Nevada picked up the expansion expenses currently paid by the federal government, it would cost the state an additional $6.7 billion over a roughly nine-year period, or about $670 million yearly. For comparison, the state is expected to bring in a bit more than $12 billion in revenue in the next two years.
- Yeager said Thursday there’s likely no money in the state budget to keep the Medicaid expansion population covered if the expansion rate is stripped away.
- “We’d have to pull funding from education. We’d have to pull funding from every other state agency. We don’t have a printing press in the basement where we can print money,” Yeager said. “I think we would be in a very untenable situation of having to cut services, and I don’t know how we would do that.”
- After Nevada expanded Medicaid in 2014, its uninsured rate dropped from 22 percent in 2012 to 12 percent in 2015, and it saw the largest percentage point decline in its rate of uninsured children, which dropped from 14.9 percent in 2013 to 7.6 percent in 2015.
KTNV: Nevada Democrats concerned about potential federal funding cuts to Medicaid
2/20/25
Key points:
- Nevada Democrats are concerned about how potential federal funding cuts could impact Nevada’s expanded “Medicaid program.”
- State senate leadership says Nevada Health officials are concerned and sent a letter about the issue.
- They say Nevada could lose $1.9 billion in federal funding over the next two years if Congress moves forward with the House Republicans plan to slash program funding.
- President Trump has endorsed the House Republicans’ plan to slash program funding.
- President Trump endorsed the House budget plan yesterday.
- I spoke to state democrats who say they are concerned about the 800,000 Nevadans who are on Medicaid, which is one out of four Nevadans and thousands of kids covered by the state’s CHIP program, which provides health coverage to low to moderate-income children.
- “You know, right now here in our state in Nevada, we rank last in terms of health care across the United States. And we know that our health care system is very fragile,” said State Senator Fabian Doñate.
- “And so that’s why it’s important for us to be ensuring that we are understanding of the potential cuts or ramifications that could be made based on the congressional Republican actions that’s happening federally. Right now, there’s a proposal to cut Medicaid funding, right? And, this is the safety net program that so many thousands and thousands of Nevadans rely on,” State Senator Doñate continued to say.
- Channel 13 also reached out to Governor Lombardo for a statement on the Medicaid issue.
- We have not yet heard back.
Las Vegas Review-Journal: How could federal funding cuts impact Nevada’s expanded Medicaid program?
2/19/25
Key points:
- A Medicaid expansion program in Nevada could lose almost $1.9 billion in federal funding if Congress moves forward with House Republicans’ plans to slash program funding, Nevada health officials told state Senate leadership in a Tuesday letter.
- Richard Whitley, director of the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services, wrote the letter in response to the senators’ request for answers on how Nevada could be affected by federal cuts to the program, which has been explored in Congress in recent weeks. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump endorsed the House budget plan.
- Senate Democrats said they sent the Feb. 4 request because they were concerned about the impact to the state, where about 800,000 Nevadans are on Medicaid. The state’s expanded federal and state health insurance program for low-income earners could see funding cuts, according to one consideration in the House budget plan.
- Democrats say hundreds of thousands of Nevadans’ health coverage could be at risk. About 312,000 Nevadans were covered by the state’s Medicaid expansion in June 2024, or 42 percent of the total Medicaid enrollment in the state, according to nonprofit KFF, formerly known as The Kaiser Family Foundation.
- State Sen. Fabian Doñate, the chamber’s health and human services committee chair, said he was concerned about the potential ramifications of the funding cuts. He said the loss of federal funding could result in the loss of coverage for people in the Medicaid expansion program and impact the state’s ability to reimburse providers for supplemental payments.
- Whitley did not directly answer how many Nevadans may lose their coverage because of cuts.
- Assembly Minority Leader Greg Hafen, R-Pahrump, said he was not concerned about how the federal budget cuts could impact Nevadans.
- States that have implemented the Medicaid expansion through the Affordable Care Act receive a 90 percent federal match rate for adults. Congressional Republicans have proposed equalizing the match rate.
- Whitley said if that change occurs for the upcoming two-year state budget cycle, Nevada would lose almost $1.9 billion. It would impact the state general fund and the funding for the state’s supplemental payment programs for providers.
- Doñate said he is worried about Nevadans losing health care coverage and going uninsured — or raising taxes to make up for the lost funding. The ACA’s Medicaid expansion cut into the state’s uninsured population, from about 22 percent in 2012 to about 11 percent in 2023, according to the UnitedHealth Foundation.
- Legislators intend to press DHHS officials for additional details on the impact of possible Medicaid cuts during a joint hearing on Feb. 26, he said. He also called on the Lombardo administration and the state’s federal delegation to work with the Trump administration to lobby against the cuts and minimize impacts.
- “There’s just no way that we’re going to take a step backward in any scenario,” he said. “And ultimately, we can’t do this ourselves. We need our Republican colleagues to work with us. We need the Lombardo administration to work with us.”
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