| Once again, Congressman Tom Kean Jr. is “falling well short.”
NJ Spotlight News reports that under Tom Kean Jr.’s failed leadership, New Jersey will receive the “least funding” of any U.S. state from a patchwork health care program that Kean Jr. and his allies have deceptively “touted.”
NJ Spotlight News reports bluntly: “Kean voted for the law that pulled billions in dollars out of the state he represents.”
It’s just the latest example of Kean Jr. betraying his own community.
Read the reporting for yourself:
- A healthcare fund Congress created to cover the expected losses from federal cuts in President Donald Trump’s signature budget law is falling well short.
- New Jersey will receive about $147 million this year from the fund — the least of any U.S. state. Republicans who represent large, rural states created the fund to blunt cuts to Medicaid, a national health insurance system.
- That funding will cover a sliver of the estimated $3.6 billion annual cut for health care services in New Jersey due to the new law signed by Trump and approved by the Republican-led Congress, according to an estimate from the state Department of Health Services.
- The significant healthcare shortfall is one of several financial body blows Congress and Trump have dealt to New Jersey, a state that pays significantly more in taxes than it receives from the U.S. government.
- Nationally, the law cut about $1 trillion in funding for Medicaid, which covers the poor and the disabled, and about $285 billion in food aid over the next decade.
- This Congress has separately stalled on a different health insurance topic: the extension of Obamacare tax subsidies, which lowered premiums and expanded coverage nationwide.
- After those subsidies expired on Jan. 1 of this year, premium payments rose about 16% on average in New Jersey.
- Susan Ochs, acting commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance, said tens of thousands of people who were enrolled in under Obamacare coverage have dropped off.
- Shortly after the funding was announced, the National Republican Campaign Committee, a political organization that works to elect Republicans to the House, touted Kean’s “fierce advocacy” in obtaining the money.
- Last year, Kean voted for the law that pulled billions in dollars out of the state he represents. Kean’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the funding issue.
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