US House cuts $100M in Medicaid funding for NMI

The U.S. House of Representatives passed Thursday a Republican bill that would slash Medicaid funding to the CNMI by $100 million and a total of $6.3 billion to all five U.S. territories, but delegates are hoping that the Democrat-led U.S. Senate will trash the proposal.

For low-income families and officials in the CNMI, a $100-million Medicaid funding cut spells disaster at a time when household expenses are already high and the Commonwealth Health Corp. teeters on the brink of a shutdown due to lack of funding.

“It would be too much to bear for families like us if Medicaid assistance is cut,” Precy Villafuerte, a 40-year-old mother of a 6-year-old told Saipan Tribune yesterday.

Villafuerte said Medicaid helps cover for expenses when their child becomes sick, needs checkups, and when there are medical emergencies.

“I hope this funding will not be cut. They should have mercy on all of us. It’s already too much to receive a 13.6-percent cut in food stamp benefits, and any cut in medical assistance would make it worse. Power rates are high, families have to make ends meet,” she said.

Delegate Gregorio Kilili Sablan (Ind-MP) said during the weekend that the passage of the Medicaid funding cut “takes away all of the Medicaid funding for the U.S. territories that we worked so hard to have included in health care reform legislation during the Democrat-led 111th Congress.”

“That’s a loss of about $100 million for the Northern Marianas,” Sablan said.

Three days before the House passed the proposal, the chairpersons of the Congressional Black, Hispanic, and Asian Pacific American caucuses wrote to the leaders of both parties in the U.S. House to express their strong opposition to the proposed cut to territorial Medicaid funding.

“Specifically, this legislation would repeal a provision in the Affordable Care Act that sought to improve the unjust treatment that the 4.1 million Americans in the five U.S. territories have historically endured under the Medicaid program. If enacted, these cuts would have a devastating impact in the territories,” the chairpersons of the caucuses said in their two-page letter.

To no avail.

The Medicaid funding cut was part of the Republican Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act, H.R. 5652 or the fiscal year 2013 spending plan that Sablan said “reflects the majority’s unbalanced approach to deficit reduction.”

“They provide costly additional tax breaks for millionaires while finding savings by ending the Medicare guarantee for seniors, cutting food stamps, and taking away Medicaid from the territories,” he said.

Sablan, who has been an independent since he first ran for office, has been aligning himself with Democrats in Congress. Gov. Benigno R. Fitial, chairman of the Republican Party of the CNMI, wants Sablan replaced with a Republican.

Fitial also earlier joined territorial governors in asking a House committee not to cut Medicaid funding to the CNMI, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.

Senate President Paul Manglona (Ind-Rota) said the funding cut is “unfortunate” not only for the CNMI but other territories as well.

“It’s a big blow for the Commonwealth and other territories. This will be very detrimental. It’s also unfortunate that our governor thinks that the Republicans in Congress are our friends,” Manglona said last night.

Manglona said the CNMI should rally behind Sablan and other territorial delegates in asking the U.S. Senate to kill the proposal to cut Medicaid funding.

Medicaid is the federal health care program for low-income families. Some 14,700 people in the Marianas, who cannot afford health insurance, are eligible for hospital care, outpatient services, and prescription drugs through Medicaid.

Sen. Ralph Torres (R-Saipan), chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, said that providing healthcare would become more difficult than it already is if Medicaid funding for the CNMI is cut.