News: Congressional letter calls for averting $8 billion cuts to Medicaid DSH program

A bipartisan coalition of 51 senators has issued a letter to Senate leaders Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell to address and avert an $8 billion cut to the Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) program, slated to begin on October 1 and continue for the next four years.

The reduction in DSH is one result of a series of legislative proposals enacted in May, which had advanced through the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health unanimously, 27-0.

According to the American Hospital Association (AHA), the DSH program

…provide[s] financial assistance to hospitals serving a disproportionate number of low-income patients to ensure Medicaid and uninsured patients have access to health care services. These hospitals also provide critical community services, such as trauma and burn care, maternal and child health care, high-risk neonatal care and disaster preparedness resources. The patients they serve are among those that need care the most and often experience challenges accessing it, including children, the poor, the disabled and the elderly.

These reductions were built in as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and included with the assumption that the ACA would inevitably “increase health insurance coverage,” and, as a result, “hospitals would no longer need additional payments to offset uncompensated care costs,” according to the letter.

However, because these aspirations have not been fully (nor even partially) realized, hospitals are continuing to care for uninsured and underinsured patients in droves.

A reduction in the DSH program, the signatories argue, would place an enormous financial strain on struggling hospitals, undermining their viability, and threatening access to care for the most vulnerable Americans: “We ask you to act as soon as possible to address the Medicaid DSH cuts to ensure our nation’s hospitals can continue to care for every community.”

Editor’s note: To read the Congressional letter, click here. To read the ACDIS coverage of the May legislative proposals, click here.