On Feb 19th, Donald Trump endorsed House Republicans’ budget proposal that would slash funding for critical services like Medicaid. Currently, more than 2 million Virginians rely on Medicaid, with over 630,000 having gained access to healthcare through the expansion of the program in 2019 under Democratic leadership.

Cardinal News: Hundreds of thousands of Virginians could lose insurance coverage if Medicaid expansion is rolled back

By Emily Schabacker and Elizabeth Beyer

• [..] Conversations have begun in Washington about cutting Medicaid funding. Such cuts could trigger a state law that would reverse Virginia’s 2019 expansion of the insurance program if federal funding drops by even 1%, leaving hundreds of thousands of Virginians without health insurance.

• Many rural hospitals depend heavily on Medicaid expansion patients to stay financially viable. Without this funding, these hospitals could face financial strain, risking the services they provide to underserved communities.

• Efforts are underway in Richmond to safeguard expansion. A budget amendment introduced by Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, and another by Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Chesterfield County, seek to remove the trigger law and establish a committee to explore alternative funding options for Medicaid expansion.

• Josiah Smith was 32 years old when he woke up one morning in 2014 with painfully swollen knees. [...] He eventually was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, an autoimmune disease that causes inflammation in the joints and at the base of the spine. 

• “We have lived without Medicaid, so I can tell you what happens to people when they don’t have access to health care,” his mother said. It angers her, she says, because “they tell me that if they had caught it early enough it wouldn’t be this advanced.”

• Before Medicaid expansion, Virginia had one of the highest uninsured rates in the country. In the year prior to expansion, about 27.6% of residents under 65 years old lacked health insurance. That’s about 5 percentage points above the national average, according to data from the National Institutes of Health.  

• Many individuals could lose health insurance if Medicaid funding is reduced, and not all of those people would get coverage other ways, Madala said.