RICHMOND — As Republican lawmakers in Washington, D.C., consider cuts to Medicaid, a new report has found thousands of veterans in Virginia could be affected.
Virginia passed Medicaid expansion in 2018, which broadened who qualified for the program, including people under 65 and without children who make 138% or less of the federal poverty level. The report by The Commonwealth Institute showed more than 47,000 Virginia veterans receive health coverage through Medicaid.
Freddy Mejia, policy director at the institute, said work requirements or cuts to the Medicaid expansion would increase barriers to Virginians’ access to health care.
“We just kind of want to raise the profile of how federal cuts to Medicaid could impact not only hundreds of thousands of Virginians, nearly 629,000 Virginians that have health coverage through Medicaid expansion, but also to veterans in particular here in Virginia,” Mejia outlined.
Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., the Speaker of the House, has said the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act allowed people who did not truly need the benefit to enroll. Republicans have called for major cuts in spending across the federal government but are split on which entitlement programs should be trimmed, and by how much.
Virginia is one of eight states with what is known as an automatic trigger law in place, where states would immediately end their expansion if the federal government lowers its funding of the Medicaid expansion below 90%.
Mejia argued veterans in the Commonwealth would get caught up in the cuts.
“If the federal government decides to reduce funding for Medicaid expansion by even 1%, our state law means that it would automatically end Medicaid expansion,” Mejia pointed out. “That would immediately throw potentially thousands of veterans off of coverage.”
More than 20% of Virginians access health care through Medicaid.
