Abbott hasn’t delivered on block grant request
Greg Abbott campaigned for governor by saying the state should seek federal approval to receive Medicaid aid via block grants. The state, he said, could manage how such money is spent better than the federal government does.
“The one-size-fits-all approach, mandated from Washington, D.C., and the Medicaid system, does not help Texas address the unique needs of the diverse population we have in this state,” Abbott said in Houston in September 2014. His Healthy Texans Plan recommended requesting federal Medicaid funds in the form of a block grant.
Some 15 months into his governorship, we decided to put this Abbott plan to our AbbottO-Meter, which tracks the progress of the governor’s campaign promises.
It doesn’t look like he’s made that block grant request. We speculate that’s because Congress has to act for such block grants to be possible.
Medicaid, launched by Congress in the 1960s, mostly guarantees health coverage to elderly people, adults with disabilities and children living at or near the federal poverty line; federal aid covers more than half the costs. As of 2016, about 4 million Texans were beneficiaries, according to preliminary counts.
In the Healthy Texans Plan issued by his campaign, Abbott wrote that federal waivers previously granted for the state to control some federal spending had proven inefficient. In 2011, he said, the state won approval of a Medicaid “transformation” waiver to establish a risk-based incentive pool allowing regional health care providers to focus billions of dollars in funding over five years on experimental programs to improve health outcomes.
But federal approvals weren’t secured until May 2013, Abbott said, with about 200 additional projects not approved until summer 2014. “Many of the approved projects required two years to implement,” Abbott said. “The time and resources exhausted in administering this five-year demonstration waiver could arguably have been better spent if the state was allowed to operate its Medicaid program without the constant need for approval from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.”
We spotted no signs of Abbott