WHAT OHIOANS ARE READING: “Callous” Medicaid Cuts “Will Increase Death Rates,” “Hit Ohio Health Care Systems Hard”

Last month, Max Miller, Mike Turner, and Mike Carey voted to slash Medicaid and SNAP in order to pay for tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy. Now, Ohioans are hearing more about how Miller, Turner, and Carey’s votes to sell out their constituents will threaten access to lifesaving health care and their ability to put food on the table.

Read some of the coverage for yourself:

Cleveland.com: ‘It’s pretty callous’: Medicaid cuts could increase death rates, experts warn

• Pushing more than 7 million people off the Medicaid rolls, as the latest draft of Congress’ “big beautiful” tax and spending bill would do, will increase death rates, cause later stage disease diagnosis, and threaten hospitals’ bottom line, experts say.
• People without insurance are more likely to delay treatment for chronic or emerging conditions, says Cola, leading to higher rates of late-stage diagnoses for cancer and other conditions. They’re also less likely to get regular checkups that can catch problems early.
• Research on the effects of health insurance coverage backs up those conclusions.
• A 2014 study in Massachusetts found that expanding health insurance coverage resulted in an absolute decrease of 8.2 deaths per 100,000 adults, as well as significant gains in self-reported health.
• Data analyzed in the New England Journal of Medicine found that states that expanded Medicaid after the Affordable Care Act’s 2010 adoption experienced a 2.9% reduction in mortality rates among adults aged 20 to 64, equating to approximately 20 fewer deaths per 100,000 individuals each year, says Cola.
• A third study found that increased health insurance coverage through Medicaid expansion was associated with a 2.3 per 100,000 person reduction in late-stage cancer diagnoses, translating to approximately 2,591 fewer cases in expansion states.
• A combination of state and federal action threatens to eliminate benefits for 770,000 of them who received coverage after Ohio expanded Medicaid in 2014.
• A study from her organization found that 40% of adults covered by Ohio’s Medicaid expansion had a mental health and/or a substance use disorder diagnosis in 2024.
• If that expansion was discontinued, many of them would lose access to treatment, undermining efforts to prevent suicide and help people with addiction recover from their condition and rebuild their lives…
• Having to take care of more uninsured people without compensation if large numbers of people lose Medicaid coverage will be a “huge hit” to hospitals, predicts Silvers, particularly those in inner cities and rural areas. They will either have to close or cut back on care, he says.

Cincinnati Enquirer: Trump budget bill would slash Medicaid. How it would affect Ohio

• An early estimate from KFF, a health policy research organization, determined that 307,000 to 512,000 Ohioans could lose [Medicaid] coverage – numbers that may increase under the latest version of the bill.
• Dr. Camille Graham, a retired pediatrician with over 40 years of experience treating children in Cincinnati, is worried that Medicaid cuts will affect some of Ohio’s most vulnerable patients: children.
• Medicaid provides health coverage to over 1.3 million children in Ohio and pays for nearly 40% of births in the state. And in her private practice and as a doctor at Cincinnati Children’s, Graham saw firsthand how critical Medicaid was to ensuring infants were screened for life-threatening disorders such as cystic fibrosis and meeting developmental milestones for motor skills and speech.
• …Graham is worried that parents scraping by on $40,000 a year might delay or avoid doctor’s appointments that are critical to their children’s health.
• “The hospitals definitely would take a hit, because we anticipate that that same population would probably go to the emergency room for acute care,” said Graham. “It would just be kind of a vicious cycle.”
• Matthew Perry, president and chief executive officer of rural Genesis Healthcare System, emphasized that rural hospitals will be disproportionately hurt by Medicaid cuts, as rural hospitals tend to serve more Medicaid and Medicare populations than urban systems do.
• Michael Corey, director of the Human Service Chamber of Franklin County, called the consequences for health providers “swift and untenable.”
• Multiple health providers across Ohio say that the new Medicaid provisions outlined in the bill would not just likely sap them of Medicaid patients, and therefore the revenue to keep operations going, but also pile more administrative work in an industry that has been dealing with workforce shortages since the onset of COVID-19.

Crain’s Cleveland: Cuts to Medicaid could hit Ohio health care systems hard

• The potential [Medicaid] spending slashes hang over Ohio health systems, creating more uncertainty for many providers already operating on low margins.
• Experts project that the slated cuts will lead to more uninsured people and harm medical institutions’ finances, leading to cuts across operations.
• Cuts almost certainly would cause damage to health care providers and patients, J.B. Silvers, professor of health care finance at the Case Western Reserve University Weatherhead School of Management, told Crain’s.
• “Many of them are rural, smaller hospitals. They depend a lot more on Medicaid than most people realize. Almost certainly, a significant number of those would close…”
• Ohio has 66 rural hospitals — defined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as a facility located outside a metropolitan statistical area. Of these rural hospitals, 72% had an operating margin of 0% or less, Crain’s previously reported.
• Many of the health systems, looking to forecast and plan ahead on their next year’s budget, may look at cuts across their operations as a result of losing Medicaid dollars.
• “MetroHealth will continue to take care of those people (even with Medicaid cuts), but they’ll be uncompensated care. So, the financial hit will be very substantial for places like that,” Silvers said.

WOSU: Trump’s new spending bill includes reducing federal funding for SNAP food program by nearly $300B

• The bill includes cutbacks on federal funding for the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), and was formerly known as food stamps. The bill would cut back almost $300 billion to SNAP over the next 10 years.
• “We’ve got a lot of working poor already,” said Bart Logan, assistant director of Franklin County Job and Family Services. “They’re on SNAP because their jobs aren’t paying them enough.”
• The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that around 263,000 people in Ohio households with children could lose benefits.
• This bill would also have states pay for much more of the program than they currently do. […] According to Ellis-Brunn, the change would cost the state of Ohio an extra $65 million per year.

Ohio Capital Journal: Many unaware of threats to Ohio Medicaid, advocates say

• As threats build to Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor, even many Ohioans who stand to be affected don’t know it, advocates said Saturday.
• “People say, ‘Oh, I’m not on Medicaid,’” said Bria Bennett of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. “But when they hear Caresource (Ohio’s biggest Medicaid managed-care provider), they say ‘Oh yeah, my kids are on Caresource.’ […]”
• The U.S. House-passed Republican reconciliation budget — President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” — would hand out $4.6 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years. The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School estimated that 70% of the benefit would go to the richest 10% of Americans.
• Most Medicaid recipients have jobs, and a 2018 assessment in Ohio said that health coverage made it easier for those people to seek and keep employment.
• It might come as a surprise for many, but 26% of Ohioans are on Medicaid, and low-income residents are so numerous that 30% of households make 200% or less of the federal poverty level.
• “I know folks who have four-plus kids. Because of what they make, all of their kids are on Medicaid,” she said. “If that’s taken away, there are no more doctor’s appointments. There’s no more dentist’s appointments.”

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