The American Health Care Act — as passed by the House May 4 — would allocate more money toward states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA than the 19 states that did not, according to a Missouri Hospital Association study cited by The Kansas City Star.
The House Republican bill, which is now being considered by the Senate, proposes phasing out the ACA's Medicaid expansion and instating a per-capita cap on federal funding for the program. The study found as the proposed caps are based on 2016 Medicaid spending, the federal government would spend $1,936 per capita in Medicaid expansion states compared to $1,158 per capita in nonexpansion states.
David Dillon, vice president of public and media relations for MHA, told The Kansas City Star, "Assuming that you want to treat everyone equally[,] then doing this is a clear way of not treating all states equally. It in fact penalizes states that didn't expand Medicaid."
While the House-passed AHCA earmarks $10 billion in funding throughout five years for nonexpansion states, Mr. Dillon said that is $680 billion less than the amount required to equalize nonexpansion states with Medicaid-expansion states.