With the clock ticking on the deadline for Congress to renew enhanced subsidies for Affordable Care Act marketplace health insurance, a number of states are looking for ways to compensate for the loss of that subsidy money and help some of their residents remain insured.

California, Colorado, Maryland, and Washington are among the states looking in their pockets and underneath the sofa cushions in search for money to replace federal insurance premium subsidy money they fear will disappear at the end of 2025.

They are doing so, moreover, at a time when Congress is looking hard at significant reductions in federal Medicaid spending that could involve some combination of changes in Medicaid eligibility criteria, benefits, and payments.

The combination of lost subsidies and Medicaid cuts would be devastating to community safety-net hospitals, leaving many of the residents of their generally low-income communities without health insurance – and leaving such hospitals unpaid for much of the care they no doubt will continue to provide even if their patients become uninsured.

Learn more about the challenges states fear they will face and what some of them are doing to attempt to anticipate and address them from the Politico article “Cash-strapped states panic over end of Obamacare subsidies.”