Leaders in the Maryland Department of Health are warning about major impacts to healthcare coverage and local economies under proposals currently being considered on Capitol Hill right now.

Leaders in the Maryland Department of Health are warning about the major impact to health care coverage and the economy under proposals being considered on Capitol Hill.

During a meeting with the Prince George’s County Board of Health on Tuesday, Ryan Moran, the state’s Medicaid director, said the current budget proposals could lead to tens of thousands of Marylanders losing health care coverage.

“We have about 1.5 million Marylanders that receive Medicaid coverage. That is about 25% of the state,” Moran said. “Almost half of all kids in the state of Maryland are enrolled in the Medicaid program.”

About 350,000 of those are getting Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and that enrollment is up about 10% since before the pandemic. Roughly 60,000 of those people live in Prince George’s County.

Moran is critical of the provisions requiring proof of work and eligibility to remain in that program.

“Work requirements are nothing but red tape,” Moran said. “They’re nothing but paperwork that are designed and incentivized for people to not to go through the process. And what we also know is that individuals who are enrolled in the Medicaid program actually do work. About three-fourths of individuals in the program of Medicaid are working individuals.”

The rest tend to be full-time caregivers for elderly relatives, children, or a disabled family member, he said.

Based on experiences in other states, he said about 56,000 Marylanders would lose health care, often because of what he described as red tape. And he said increased proof of eligibility requirements would lead to 130,000 more people losing coverage, also attributing that to bureaucratic difficulties.

If those numbers bear out, he said it would cause the state to lose hundreds of millions of dollars, if not over a billion dollars, in federal health care funding. That means lower reimbursements to providers, and more hospitals providing care that can’t be paid for by patients.

“The Medicaid the program has about 125,000 providers across the state,” Moran said, calling them economic foundations in local communities.

“Those 125,000 providers that are paid through Medicaid employ thousands of individuals, employ thousands of workers that provide coverage to these individuals. So any change in terms of coverage, policy shifts, etc, of course, will impact the providers that serve them and our local economies as well.”

However, those proposals also tend to be popular, at least on the surface.

A poll from KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation, found that most Americans have favorable opinions of Medicaid, and that 68% of Americans, including half of Democrats surveyed, approve of the proof of work requirements being pushed by Republicans.

However, it also noted that number tends to decline the more people hear arguments from those like Moran, even if a majority of Republicans remain unpersuaded by those arguments.

Moran also said that further funding cuts of about $400 million could come if undocumented migrants are enrolled in any type of state health care program, even if federal dollars aren’t used to support it.

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