We have joined with other members of the Texas Children’s Health Coverage Coalition (CHCC) to urge the federal government to scale back a proposed rule that would cut Medicaid funding for the state by $15.9 billion over 10 years.
At a time when pregnant women in rural Texas are already driving farther and farther to find prenatal care or a hospital where they can deliver their baby, the proposed cuts threaten to further reduce access to care.
The coalition’s letter warns that the proposed cuts threaten key services, including labor and delivery units at Texas hospitals, NICUs for medically fragile newborn babies, and mental health services.
The draft rule, recently published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), is intended to implement the cuts to “State Directed Payments” that Congress passed last year in HR 1, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill.
However, the coalition underscored that the nationwide Medicaid cuts in the proposed rule ($500 billion over 10 years) are much deeper than the cuts Congress outlined in HR 1 ($150 billion over 10 years).
