Proposed Medicaid Cuts [3-25]

Hendricks Community Hospital strives to serve Hendricks and our surrounding communities. To inform our area patrons, we will be publishing topics in our area newspapers about the services and specialties we offer at our local level. Various topics will be covered throughout the next several months to ensure our community is provided with the best knowledge in making their healthcare choices. Our goal is that you enjoy reading more about the services we provide and feel more confident in your decision-making. 

By Travis Olsen

The topic I’d like to touch on briefly this week is Medicaid funding. We all hear about Medicare and Medicaid and I believe most associate those terms with healthcare funding, which is absolutely true. While Medicare is federal heath insurance for anyone age 65 and older (generally speaking,) Medicaid is a joint federal and state program that gives health insurance coverage to some with limited income and resources.

Medicaid is the hot topic right now as there’s an $880 billion dollar proposed cut (over the next decade) to that program in the new spending bill that did pass the House just a couple of weeks ago. The Senate will vote on this spending bill later this month.

I just want to take a minute to show our community how this could potentially affect HCHA.  $880 billion over 10 years is obviously $88 billion per year that would be cut.  The federal government currently funds $630 billion to Medicaid annually so the potential cut would be 14% (88/630.) Minnesota’s Medicaid budget is around $19 billion annually of which $12 billion of that comes from the federal government. If the state can continue to fund the $7 billion, and federal budget is cut by 14%, the $12 billion now becomes roughly $10 billion.  If these rough numbers would hold true, the new state budget would drop from $19 billion to $17 billion which is about an 11% reduction.

Okay, that was a lot of big number talk.  HCHA’s annual Medicaid revenue is approximately $4 million so a quick calculation of 11% of $4 million is $440,000.  That would be the initial negative financial impact to our local hospital and that’s mainly tied to our nursing home. Our balance sheet is strong right now but this cut would be a devastating impact to our revenue stream.

I just simply wanted you to be aware of this as we follow the vote in the Senate for the new spending bill proposal for the federal government.

We are looking forward to our Good Shepherd Hospice fundraising event Saturday night, March 8th, and by the time this letter gets printed that event will be in the past!  Alicia Tykwinski, Andia Comstock, Laralyn Skorczewski and our amazing and dedicated HCHA volunteers have organized a great event and I’m sure the outcome is going to be extremely positive for our hospice program!

Also, please be sure to watch for the HCHA Community Health Needs Assessment Survey that has been circulating.  We truly want and need your input to help guide the direction of HCHA for the next few years. If you haven’t seen it, I’ll attach the survey QR code below.  If you haven’t used a QR code before, all you need to do is grab your phone and open your camera (like you are about to take a picture) and hover your phone over the code below.  You should see a link appear on your screen so all you do is click on that link and it will take you directly to the survey!  Thanks for giving this a whirl!  We want to have services that you need and desire here at HCHA!  Please give us your input by the end of this week so your voice is heard!