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What Florida’s New 6-Week Abortion Ban Means for the South, and Traveling Patients

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Christopher O’Donnell, Tampa Bay Times
Mon, 29 Apr 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Monica Kelly was thrilled to learn she was expecting her second child.

The Tennessee mother was around 13 weeks pregnant when, according to a lawsuit filed against the state of Tennessee, doctors gave her the devastating news that her baby had Patau syndrome.

The genetic disorder causes serious developmental defects and often results in miscarriage, stillbirth, or death within one year of birth. Continuing her pregnancy, doctors told her, could put her at risk of infection and complications that include high blood pressure, organ failure, and death.

But they said they could not perform an abortion due to a Tennessee law banning most abortions that went into effect two months after the repeal of Roe v. Wade in June 2022, court records show.

So Kelly traveled to a northwestern Florida hospital to get an abortion while about 15 weeks pregnant. She is one of seven women and two doctors suing Tennessee because they say the state’s near-total abortion ban imperils the lives of pregnant women.

More than 25,000 women like Kelly traveled to Florida for an abortion over the past five years, state data shows. Most came from states such as Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi with little or no access to abortion, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows. Hundreds traveled from as far as Texas.

But a recent Florida Supreme Court ruling paved the way for the Sunshine State to enforce a six-week ban beginning in May, effectively leaving women in much of the South with little or no access to abortion clinics. The ban could be short-lived if 60% of Florida voters in November approve a constitutional amendment adding the right to an abortion.


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In the meantime, nonprofit groups are warning they may not be able to meet the increased demand for help from women from Florida and other Southeastern states to travel for an abortion. They fear women who lack the resources will be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term because they cannot afford to travel to states where abortions are more available.

That could include women whose pregnancies, like Kelly’s, put them at risk.

“The six-week ban is really a problem not just for Florida but the entire Southeast,” said McKenna Kelley, a board member of the Tampa Bay Abortion Fund. “Florida was the last man standing in the Southeast for abortion access.”

Travel Bans and Stricter Limits

Supporters of the Florida restrictions aren’t backing down. Some want even stricter limits. Republican state Rep. Mike Beltran voted for both the 15-week and six-week bans. He said the vast majority of abortions are elective and that those related to medical complications make up a tiny fraction.

State data shows that 95% of abortions last year were either elective or performed due to social or economic reasons. More than 5% were related to issues with either the health of the mother or the fetus.

Beltran said he would support a ban on travel for abortions but knows it would be challenged in the courts. He would support measures that prevent employers from paying for workers to travel for abortions and such costs being tax-deductible, he said.

“I don’t think we should make it easier for people to travel for abortion,” he said. “We should put things in to prevent circumvention of the law.”

Both abortion bans were also supported by GOP state lawmaker Joel Rudman. As a physician, Rudman said, he has delivered more than 100 babies and sees nothing in the current law that sacrifices patient safety.

“It is a good commonsense law that provides reasonable exceptions yet respects the sanctity of life for both mother and child,” he said in a text message.

Last year, the first full year that many Southern states had bans in place, more than 7,700 women traveled to Florida for an abortion, an increase of roughly 59% compared with three years ago.

The Tampa Bay Abortion Fund, which is focused on helping local women, found itself assisting an influx of women from Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and other states, Kelley said.

In 2023, it paid out more than $650,000 for appointment costs and over $67,000 in other expenses such as airplane tickets and lodging. Most of those who seek assistance are from low-income families including minorities or disabled people, Kelley said.

“We ask each person, ‘What can you contribute?’” she said. “Some say zero and that’s fine.” 

Florida’s new law will mean her group will have to pivot again. The focus will now be on helping people seeking abortions travel to other states.

But the destinations are farther and more expensive. Most women, she predicted, will head to New York, Illinois, or Washington, D.C. Clinic appointments in those states are often more expensive. The extra travel distance will mean help is needed with hotels and airfare.

North Carolina, which allows abortions through about 12 weeks of pregnancy, may be a slightly cheaper option for some women whose pregnancies are not as far along, she said.

Keeping up with that need is a concern, she said. Donations to the group soared to $755,000 in 2022, which Kelley described as “rage donations” made after the U.S. Supreme Court ended half a century of guaranteeing the federal right to an abortion.

The anger didn’t last. Donations in 2023 declined to $272,000, she said.

“We’re going to have huge problems on our hands in a few weeks,” she said. “A lot of people who need an abortion are not going to be able to access one. That’s really scary and sad.”

Gray Areas Lead to Confusion

The Chicago Abortion Fund is expecting that many women from Southeastern states will head its way.

Illinois offers abortions up until fetal viability — around 24 to 26 weeks. The state five years ago repealed its law requiring parents to be notified when their children seek an abortion.

About 3 in 10 abortions performed in Illinois two years ago — almost 17,000 — involved out-of-state residents, up from fewer than a quarter the previous year, according to state records.

The Chicago nonprofit has prided itself on not turning away requests for help over the past five years, said Qudsiyyah Shariyf, a deputy director. It is adding staffers, including Spanish-language speakers, to cope with an anticipated uptick in calls for help from Southern states. She hopes Florida voters will make the crisis short-lived.  

“We’re estimating we’ll need an additional $100,000 a month to meet that influx of folks from Florida and the South,” she said. “We know it’s going to be a really hard eight months until something potentially changes.”

Losing access to abortion, especially among vulnerable groups like pregnant teenagers and women with pregnancy complications, could also increase cases of mental illness such as depression, anxiety, and even post-traumatic stress disorder, said Silvia Kaminsky, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Miami.


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Kaminsky, who serves as board president of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, said the group has received calls from therapists seeking legal guidance about whether they can help a client who wants to travel for an abortion.

That’s especially true in states such as Alabama, Georgia, and Missouri that have passed laws granting “personhood” status to fetuses. Therapists in many states, including Florida, are required to report a client who intends to harm another individual.

“It’s creating all these gray areas that we didn’t have to deal with before,” Kaminsky said.

Deborah Dorbert of Lakeland, Florida, said that Florida’s 15-week abortion limit put her health at risk and that she was forced to carry to term a baby with no chance of survival.

Her unborn child was diagnosed with Potter syndrome in November 2022. An ultrasound taken at 23 weeks of pregnancy showed that the fetus had not developed enough amniotic fluid and that its kidneys were undeveloped.

Doctors told her that her child would not survive outside the womb and that there was a high risk of a stillbirth and, for her, preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication that can result in high blood pressure, organ failure, and death.

One option doctors suggested was a pre-term inducement, essentially an abortion, Dorbert said.

Dorbert and her husband were heartbroken. They decided an abortion was their safest option.

At Lakeland Regional Health, she said, she was told her surgery would have to be approved by the hospital administration and its lawyers since Florida had that year enacted its 15-week abortion restriction.

Florida’s abortion law includes an exemption if two physicians certify in writing that a fetus has a fatal fetal abnormality and has not reached viability. But a month elapsed before she got an answer in her case. Her doctor told her the hospital did not feel they could legally perform the procedure and that she would have to carry the baby to term, Dorbert said.

Lakeland Regional Health did not respond to repeated calls and emails seeking comment.

Dorbert’s gynecologist had mentioned to her that some women traveled for an abortion. But Dorbert said she could not afford the trip and was concerned she might break the law by going out of state.

At 37 weeks, doctors agreed to induce Dorbert. She checked into Lakeland Regional Hospital in March 2023 and, after a long and painful labor, gave birth to a boy named Milo.

“When he was born, he was blue; he didn’t open his eyes; he didn’t cry,” she said. “The only sound you heard was him gasping for air every so often.”

She and her husband took turns holding Milo. They read him a book about a mother polar bear who tells her cub she will always love them. They sang Bob Marley and The Wailers’ “Three Little Birds” to Milo with its chorus that “every little thing is gonna be alright.”

Milo died in his mother’s arms 93 minutes after being born.

One year later, Dorbert is still dealing with the anguish. The grief is still “heavy” some days, she said.

She and her husband have discussed trying for another child, but Florida’s abortion laws have made her wary of another pregnancy with complications.

“It makes you angry and frustrated. I could not get the health care I needed and that my doctors advised for me,” she said. “I know I can’t go through what I went through again.”

——————————
By: Christopher O’Donnell, Tampa Bay Times
Title: What Florida’s New 6-Week Abortion Ban Means for the South, and Traveling Patients
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/florida-6-week-abortion-ban-patient-travel-south/
Published Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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US Judge Names Receiver To Take Over California Prisons’ Mental Health Program

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kffhealthnews.org – Don Thompson – 2025-03-20 12:46:00

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A judge has initiated a federal court takeover of California’s troubled prison mental health system by naming the former head of the Federal Bureau of Prisons to serve as receiver, giving her four months to craft a plan to provide adequate care for tens of thousands of prisoners with serious mental illness.

Senior U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller issued her order March 19, identifying Colette Peters as the nominated receiver. Peters, who was Oregon’s first female corrections director and known as a reformer, ran the scandal-plagued federal prison system for 30 months until President Donald Trump took office in January. During her tenure, she closed a women’s prison in Dublin, east of Oakland, that had become known as the “rape club.”

Michael Bien, who represents prisoners with mental illness in the long-running prison lawsuit, said Peters is a good choice. Bien said Peters’ time in Oregon and Washington, D.C., showed that she “kind of buys into the fact that there are things we can do better in the American system.”

“We took strong objection to many things that happened under her tenure at the BOP, but I do think that this is a different job and she’s capable of doing it,” said Bien, whose firm also represents women who were housed at the shuttered federal women’s prison.

California corrections officials called Peters “highly qualified” in a statement, while Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office did not immediately comment. Mueller gave the parties until March 28 to show cause why Peters should not be appointed.

Peters is not talking to the media at this time, Bien said. The judge said Peters is to be paid $400,000 a year, prorated for the four-month period.

About 34,000 people incarcerated in California prisons have been diagnosed with serious mental illnesses, representing more than a third of California’s prison population, who face harm because of the state’s noncompliance, Mueller said.

Appointing a receiver is a rare step taken when federal judges feel they have exhausted other options. A receiver took control of Alabama’s correctional system in 1976, and they have otherwise been used to govern prisons and jails only about a dozen times, mostly to combat poor conditions caused by overcrowding. Attorneys representing inmates in Arizona have asked a judge to take over prison health care there.

Mueller’s appointment of a receiver comes nearly 20 years after a different federal judge seized control of California’s prison medical system and installed a receiver, currently J. Clark Kelso, with broad powers to hire, fire, and spend the state’s money.

California officials initially said in August that they would not oppose a receivership for the mental health program provided that the receiver was also Kelso, saying then that federal control “has successfully transformed medical care” in California prisons. But Kelso withdrew from consideration in September, as did two subsequent candidates. Kelso said he could not act “zealously and with fidelity as receiver in both cases.”

Both cases have been running for so long that they are now overseen by a second generation of judges. The original federal judges, in a legal battle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, more than a decade ago forced California to significantly reduce prison crowding in a bid to improve medical and mental health care for incarcerated people.

State officials in court filings defended their improvements over the decades. Prisoners’ attorneys countered that treatment remains poor, as evidenced in part by the system’s record-high suicide rate, topping 31 suicides per 100,000 prisoners, nearly double that in federal prisons.

“More than a quarter of the 30 class-members who died by suicide in 2023 received inadequate care because of understaffing,” prisoners’ attorneys wrote in January, citing the prison system’s own analysis. One prisoner did not receive mental health appointments for seven months “before he hanged himself with a bedsheet.”

They argued that the November passage of a ballot measure increasing criminal penalties for some drug and theft crimes is likely to increase the prison population and worsen staffing shortages.

California officials argued in January that Mueller isn’t legally justified in appointing a receiver because “progress has been slow at times but it has not stalled.”

Mueller has countered that she had no choice but to appoint an outside professional to run the prisons’ mental health program, given officials’ intransigence even after she held top officials in contempt of court and levied fines topping $110 million in June. Those extreme actions, she said, only triggered more delays.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on March 19 upheld Mueller’s contempt ruling but said she didn’t sufficiently justify calculating the fines by doubling the state’s monthly salary savings from understaffing prisons. It upheld the fines to the extent that they reflect the state’s actual salary savings but sent the case back to Mueller to justify any higher penalty.

Mueller had been set to begin additional civil contempt proceedings against state officials for their failure to meet two other court requirements: adequately staffing the prison system’s psychiatric inpatient program and improving suicide prevention measures. Those could bring additional fines topping tens of millions of dollars.

But she said her initial contempt order has not had the intended effect of compelling compliance. Mueller wrote as far back as July that additional contempt rulings would also be likely to be ineffective as state officials continued to appeal and seek delays, leading “to even more unending litigation, litigation, litigation.”

She went on to foreshadow her latest order naming a receiver in a preliminary order: “There is one step the court has taken great pains to avoid. But at this point,” Mueller wrote, “the court concludes the only way to achieve full compliance in this action is for the court to appoint its own receiver.”

This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation. 

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Amid Plummeting Diversity at Medical Schools, a Warning of DEI Crackdown’s ‘Chilling Effect’

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kffhealthnews.org – Annie Sciacca – 2025-03-20 04:00:00

The Trump administration’s crackdown on DEI programs could exacerbate an unexpectedly steep drop in diversity among medical school students, even in states like California, where public universities have been navigating bans on affirmative action for decades. Education and health experts warn that, ultimately, this could harm patient care.

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has issued a handful of executive orders aimed at terminating all diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives in federally funded programs. And in his March 4 address to Congress, he described the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning the consideration of race in college and university admissions as “brave and very powerful.”

Last month, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights — which lost about 50% of its staff in mid-March — directed schools, including postsecondary institutions, to end race-based programs or risk losing federal funding. The “Dear Colleague” letter cited the Supreme Court’s decision.

Paulette Granberry Russell, president and CEO of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, said that “every utterance of ‘diversity’ is now being viewed as a violation or considered unlawful or illegal.” Her organization filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders.

While California and eight other states — Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Washington — had already implemented bans of varying degrees on race-based admissions policies well before the Supreme Court decision, schools bolstered diversity in their ranks with equity initiatives such as targeted scholarships, trainings, and recruitment programs.

But the court’s decision and the subsequent state-level backlash — 29 states have since introduced bills to curb diversity initiatives, according to data published by the Chronicle of Higher Education — have tamped down these efforts and led to the recent declines in diversity numbers, education experts said.

After the Supreme Court’s ruling, the numbers of Black and Hispanic medical school enrollees fell by double-digit percentages in the 2024-25 school year compared with the previous year, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. Black enrollees declined 11.6%, while the number of new students of Hispanic origin fell 10.8%. The decline in enrollment of American Indian or Alaska Native students was even more dramatic, at 22.1%. New Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander enrollment declined 4.3%.

“We knew this would happen,” said Norma Poll-Hunter, AAMC’s senior director of workforce diversity. “But it was double digits — much larger than what we anticipated.”

The fear among educators is the numbers will decline even more under the new administration.

At the end of February, the Education Department launched an online portal encouraging people to “report illegal discriminatory practices at institutions of learning,” stating that students should have “learning free of divisive ideologies and indoctrination.” The agency later issued a “Frequently Asked Questions” document about its new policies, clarifying that it was acceptable to observe events like Black History Month but warning schools that they “must consider whether any school programming discourages members of all races from attending.”

“It definitely has a chilling effect,” Poll-Hunter said. “There is a lot of fear that could cause institutions to limit their efforts.”

Numerous requests for comment from medical schools about the impact of the anti-DEI actions went unreturned. University presidents are staying mum on the issue to protect their institutions, according to reporting from The New York Times.

Utibe Essien, a physician and UCLA assistant professor, said he has heard from some students who fear they won’t be considered for admission under the new policies. Essien, who co-authored a study on the effect of affirmative action bans on medical schools, also said students are worried medical schools will not be as supportive toward students of color as in the past.

“Both of these fears have the risk of limiting the options of schools folks apply to and potentially those who consider medicine as an option at all,” Essien said, adding that the “lawsuits around equity policies and just the climate of anti-diversity have brought institutions to this place where they feel uncomfortable.”

In early February, the Pacific Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit against the University of California-San Francisco’s Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland over an internship program designed to introduce “underrepresented minority high school students to health professions.”

Attorney Andrew Quinio filed the suit, which argues that its plaintiff, a white teenager, was not accepted to the program after disclosing in an interview that she identified as white.

“From a legal standpoint, the issue that comes about from all this is: How do you choose diversity without running afoul of the Constitution?” Quinio said. “For those who want diversity as a goal, it cannot be a goal that is achieved with discrimination.”

UC Health spokesperson Heather Harper declined to comment on the suit on behalf of the hospital system.

Another lawsuit filed in February accuses the University of California of favoring Black and Latino students over Asian American and white applicants in its undergraduate admissions. Specifically, the complaint states that UC officials pushed campuses to use a “holistic” approach to admissions and “move away from objective criteria towards more subjective assessments of the overall appeal of individual candidates.”

The scrutiny of that approach to admissions could threaten diversity at the UC-Davis School of Medicine, which for years has employed a “race-neutral, holistic admissions model” that reportedly tripled enrollment of Black, Latino, and Native American students.

“How do you define diversity? Does it now include the way we consider how someone’s lived experience may be influenced by how they grew up? The type of school, the income of their family? All of those are diversity,” said Granberry Russell, of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education. “What might they view as an unlawful proxy for diversity equity and inclusion? That’s what we’re confronted with.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, recently joined other state attorneys general to issue guidance urging that schools continue their DEI programs despite the federal messaging, saying that legal precedent allows for the activities. California is also among several states suing the administration over its deep cuts to the Education Department.

If the recent decline in diversity among newly enrolled students holds or gets worse, it could have long-term consequences for patient care, academic experts said, pointing toward the vast racial disparities in health outcomes in the U.S., particularly for Black people.

A higher proportion of Black primary care doctors is associated with longer life expectancy and lower mortality rates among Black people, according to a 2023 study published by the JAMA Network.

Physicians of color are also more likely to build their careers in medically underserved communities, studies have shown, which is increasingly important as the AAMC projects a shortage of up to 40,400 primary care doctors by 2036.

“The physician shortage persists, and it’s dire in rural communities,” Poll-Hunter said. “We know that diversity efforts are really about improving access for everyone. More diversity leads to greater access to care — everyone is benefiting from it.”

This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation. 

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Tribal Health Leaders Say Medicaid Cuts Would Decimate Health Programs

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kffhealthnews.org – Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez – 2025-03-19 04:00:00

As Congress mulls potentially massive cuts to federal Medicaid funding, health centers that serve Native American communities, such as the Oneida Community Health Center near Green Bay, Wisconsin, are bracing for catastrophe.

That’s because more than 40% of the about 15,000 patients the center serves are enrolled in Medicaid. Cuts to the program would be detrimental to those patients and the facility, said Debra Danforth, the director of the Oneida Comprehensive Health Division and a citizen of the Oneida Nation.

“It would be a tremendous hit,” she said.

The facility provides a range of services to most of the Oneida Nation’s 17,000 people, including ambulatory care, internal medicine, family practice, and obstetrics. The tribe is one of two in Wisconsin that have an “open-door policy,” Danforth said, which means that the facility is open to members of any federally recognized tribe.

But Danforth and many other tribal health officials say Medicaid cuts would cause service reductions at health facilities that serve Native Americans.

Indian Country has a unique relationship to Medicaid, because the program helps tribes cover chronic funding shortfalls from the Indian Health Service, the federal agency responsible for providing health care to Native Americans.

Medicaid has accounted for about two-thirds of third-party revenue for tribal health providers, creating financial stability and helping facilities pay operational costs. More than a million Native Americans enrolled in Medicaid or the closely related Children’s Health Insurance Program also rely on the insurance to pay for care outside of tribal health facilities without going into significant medical debt. Tribal leaders are calling on Congress to exempt tribes from cuts and are preparing to fight to preserve their access.

“Medicaid is one of the ways in which the federal government meets its trust and treaty obligations to provide health care to us,” said Liz Malerba, director of policy and legislative affairs for the United South and Eastern Tribes Sovereignty Protection Fund, a nonprofit policy advocacy organization for 33 tribes spanning from Texas to Maine. Malerba is a citizen of the Mohegan Tribe.

“So we view any disruption or cut to Medicaid as an abrogation of that responsibility,” she said.

Tribes face an arduous task in providing care to a population that experiences severe health disparities, a high incidence of chronic illness, and, at least in western states, a life expectancy of 64 years — the lowest of any demographic group in the U.S. Yet, in recent years, some tribes have expanded access to care for their communities by adding health services and providers, enabled in part by Medicaid reimbursements.

During the last two fiscal years, five urban Indian organizations in Montana saw funding growth of nearly $3 million, said Lisa James, director of development for the Montana Consortium for Urban Indian Health, during a webinar in February organized by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families and the National Council of Urban Indian Health.

The increased revenue was “instrumental,” James said, allowing clinics in the state to add services that previously had not been available unless referred out for, including behavioral health services. Clinics were also able to expand operating hours and staffing.

Montana’s five urban Indian clinics, in Missoula, Helena, Butte, Great Falls, and Billings, serve 30,000 people, including some who are not Native American or enrolled in a tribe. The clinics provide a wide range of services, including primary care, dental care, disease prevention, health education, and substance use prevention.

James said Medicaid cuts would require Montana’s urban Indian health organizations to cut services and limit their ability to address health disparities.

American Indian and Alaska Native people under age 65 are more likely to be uninsured than white people under 65, but 30% rely on Medicaid compared with 15% of their white counterparts, according to KFF data for 2017 to 2021. More than 40% of American Indian and Alaska Native children are enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP, which provides health insurance to kids whose families are not eligible for Medicaid. KFF is a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

A Georgetown Center for Children and Families report from January found the share of residents enrolled in Medicaid was higher in counties with a significant Native American presence. The proportion on Medicaid in small-town or rural counties that are mostly within tribal statistical areas, tribal subdivisions, reservations, and other Native-designated lands was 28.7%, compared with 22.7% in other small-town or rural counties. About 50% of children in those Native areas were enrolled in Medicaid.

The federal government has already exempted tribes from some of Trump’s executive orders. In late February, Department of Health and Human Services acting general counsel Sean Keveney clarified that tribal health programs would not be affected by an executive order that diversity, equity, and inclusion government programs be terminated, but that the Indian Health Service is expected to discontinue diversity and inclusion hiring efforts established under an Obama-era rule.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also rescinded the layoffs of more than 900 IHS employees in February just hours after they’d received termination notices. During Kennedy’s Senate confirmation hearings, he said he would appoint a Native American as an assistant HHS secretary. The National Indian Health Board, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that advocates for tribes, in December endorsed elevating the director of the Indian Health Service to assistant secretary of HHS.

Jessica Schubel, a senior health care official in Joe Biden’s White House, said exemptions won’t be enough.

“Just because Native Americans are exempt doesn’t mean that they won’t feel the impact of cuts that are made throughout the rest of the program,” she said.

State leaders are also calling for federal Medicaid spending to be spared because cuts to the program would shift costs onto their budgets. Without sustained federal funding, which can cover more than 70% of costs, state lawmakers face decisions such as whether to change eligibility requirements to slim Medicaid rolls, which could cause some Native Americans to lose their health coverage.

Tribal leaders noted that state governments do not have the same responsibility to them as the federal government, yet they face large variations in how they interact with Medicaid depending on their state programs.

President Donald Trump has made seemingly conflicting statements about Medicaid cuts, saying in an interview on Fox News in February that Medicaid and Medicare wouldn’t be touched. In a social media post the same week, Trump expressed strong support for a House budget resolution that would likely require Medicaid cuts.

The budget proposal, which the House approved in late February, requires lawmakers to cut spending to offset tax breaks. The House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which oversees spending on Medicaid and Medicare, is instructed to slash $880 billion over the next decade. The possibility of cuts to the program that, together with CHIP, provides insurance to 79 million people has drawn opposition from national and state organizations.

The federal government reimburses IHS and tribal health facilities 100% of billed costs for American Indian and Alaska Native patients, shielding state budgets from the costs.

Because Medicaid is already a stopgap fix for Native American health programs, tribal leaders said it won’t be a matter of replacing the money but operating with less.

“When you’re talking about somewhere between 30% to 60% of a facility’s budget is made up by Medicaid dollars, that’s a very difficult hole to try and backfill,” said Winn Davis, congressional relations director for the National Indian Health Board.

Congress isn’t required to consult tribes during the budget process, Davis added. Only after changes are made by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and state agencies are tribes able to engage with them on implementation.

The amount the federal government spends funding the Native American health system is a much smaller portion of its budget than Medicaid. The IHS projected billing Medicaid about $1.3 billion this fiscal year, which represents less than half of 1% of overall federal spending on Medicaid.

“We are saving more lives,” Malerba said of the additional services Medicaid covers in tribal health care. “It brings us closer to a level of 21st century care that we should all have access to but don’t always.”

This article was published with the support of the Journalism & Women Symposium (JAWS) Health Journalism Fellowship, assisted by grants from The Commonwealth Fund.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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