As the House Energy and Commerce Committee works to craft Medicaid legislation for the upcoming budget reconciliation bill, the Alliance of Safety-Net Hospitals has asked its leaders to protect three tools critical to the ability of community safety-net hospitals to serve their communities of generally low-income, medically vulnerable residents:

• The ability of states to levy provider taxes to help finance their Medicaid programs.
• The right of states to use state-directed Medicaid payments from the managed care plans that serve Medicaid beneficiaries to address access-to-care challenges for Medicaid participants.
• The enhanced federal Medicaid matching funds that Congress assured states more than 15 years ago if they expanded participation in their Medicaid programs.

Provider taxes and state-directed payments, ASH points out in its letter to Energy and Commerce Committee leaders, are legal, legitimate tools subject to careful federal scrutiny and the enhanced federal Medicaid matching funds were a promise to the states – a promise that has helped 21 million people secure health insurance and led to record lows in the uninsured rate in many states.

Learn more about community safety-net hospitals’ perspective on these three issues from ASH’s letter to House Energy and Commerce Committee leaders.