In scaling back Medicaid provider taxes, Senate Republicans are pursuing cuts that their House colleagues were hesitant to propose. House members had landed on freezing provider tax rates at current levels instead of reducing them. If the Senate passes its plan for provider taxes, the House and the Senate will have to reconcile their differences.

The Senate also beefed up an already strict Medicaid work requirement that was already part of the House bill, adding parents of older children to the groups of people who would be subject to the new mandate.

But the Senate proposal on provider taxes would probably prove a deeper cut to Medicaid. The policy quickly drew opposition from hospitals, which also stand to lose significant funding. “These harmful proposals will impact access to all patients who are served by our nation’s hospitals and health systems,” Rick Pollack, the American Hospital Association’s president, said in a statement released Tuesday, which warned that hospitals may have to cut services or even close.

What are Medicaid provider taxes?

They work like this: When a Medicaid patient goes to the hospital, the federal government and state usually share the costs. The ratio varies from one state to another, depending on how poor the state is, but the federal government often pays around 60 percent of the bill.