AARP: Health plan bad for seniors

Group says Senate bill ‘will lead to major, harmful reductions’ in federal and state Medicaid spending.

Counselor to President Donald Trump Kellyanne Conway says GOP health plans “are not cuts to Medicaid” but a slowing of growth. However, the AARP says in a recent analysis that “this cut really is a cut.”

In a blog post, the senior-citizen advocacy group said the Senate bill “will lead to major, harmful reductions in both federal and state Medicaid spending.”

The Congressional Budget Office said Medicaid spending under the Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act would be 26 percent lower in 2026 than compared to keeping current law, and the gap would widen to about 35 percent in 2036.

Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted before the July 4 break that reporting on Medicaid “cuts” often is misleading about states including Florida that did not expand Medicaid. As long as the amount of federal money that goes to the state is “fair,” he said “no one currently on or eligible for Medicaid should lose coverage.”

The Senate is expected to resume work on the bill after the holiday break.

But groups already getting care from Medicaid in Florida stand to lose under a plan that caps federal Medicaid spending with a formula pegged initially to medical inflation and later general inflation, AARP figures.

According to an analysis from

the AARP Public Policy Insti- tute, reductions in projected Medicaid spending as a result of the per capita caps in the Senate bill could be as much as 41 percent in 2036 across all populations. This includes older adults, adults with disabilities and non-disabled children under age 19.

Medicaid covers 4 million Floridians, including half the childbirths, 70 percent of seniors in nursing homes and 41 percent of Palm Beach County’s children.

A Kaiser Family Founda- tion study found that under the Senate bill, many in Palm Beach County could see their premiums double.

For example, pr e mi- ums for a 60-year-old Palm Beach County resident mak- ing $50,000 a year could increase 135 percent.

Overall, more than 1 million Floridians’ premiums would rise an average of 69 percent, that study reported.

“In a very real sense, the Senate bill offers you less coverage and costs you more,” Dave Bruns, AARP Florida communications manager, told The Palm Beach Post this past month. “That is borne out by the Kaiser Family Foundation data and by our analysis of the bill.”

In the long run, CBO said, “states would continue to need to arrive at more efficient methods for delivering services (to the extent feasible) and to decide whether to commit more of their own resources, cut payments to health-care providers and health plans, eliminate optional services, restrict eligibility for enrollment, or adopt some combination of those approaches.”