As Congress seeks to develop budget reconciliation legislation, the Alliance of Safety-Net Hospitals has written to its members asking them to protect Medicaid during that challenging process.

As ASH notes in its message to members of Congress,

Across the country, large numbers of low-income, medically vulnerable people rely on mission-driven community safety-net hospitals, which offer the care their communities need – services like delivering babies, providing behavioral health care, operating substance use treatment programs, and more – even though those hospitals suffer significant financial losses by providing those services.  Without these services, entire communities, not just their low-income residents but their privately insured neighbors as well, would lose access to such vital, life-saving care.

In particular, ASH asks Congress and the House Energy and Commerce Committee to protect three vital Medicaid financing tools:  Medicaid provider taxes, state-directed Medicaid payments, and enhanced federal Medicaid matching funds for the Medicaid expansion population.

Learn more about ASH’s perspective on budget reconciliation and its stake in the Medicaid deliberations that will take place during that process from this ASH message to members of Congress.