LANSING — Michigan healthcare experts say potential cuts to Medicaid would leave hospitals in a difficult financial situation, especially in more rural parts of the state.
“I have to say, undoubtedly, I expect there to be hospital closures. I expect there to be clinic closures,” said Deidre Wilson, vice president of government relations for McLaren Health Care.
Lawmakers haven’t yet proposed specific cuts to Medicaid, but the US House has approved a plan calling for spending reductions that could only be achieved through cuts to Medicaid.
In the most recent proposal, those cuts would come in at around $88 billion a year over the next decade.
Wilson says that about a quarter of Northern Michigan adults are covered by Medicaid, along with a third of area children.
She added that potential Medicaid cuts would impact non-Medicaid patients too.
“For us health systems, you’re not just targeting Medicaid and that payer,” Wilson said. “You cannot avoid the impacts that it has on the systems and the entire continuum of care.”
According to the nonpartisan researcher KFF, proposed cuts would amount to 16% less funding to the program and $2 billion less for Michigan each year.
Laura Appel, senior vice president with the Michigan Health and Hospital Association, says rural healthcare is particularly sensitive to changes.
“In our rural areas, we have small populations, and some of them are also shrinking, which makes it that much harder to sustain certain services because of the fixed costs being spread over so few people,” she said.
Appel says Medicaid cuts could significantly impact pregnancy and labor services for all patients.
“When we lose a labor and delivery unit, we lose it for that entire population,” she said.
Peter Marinoff, community president of Munson Healthcare Cadillac Hospital, says about 61% of births in Cadillac are covered through Medicaid.
“Across Northern Michigan, there are roughly 75,000 people who currently have Medicaid benefits,” he said. “So under some of the proposals, some of those people could be at risk of losing those benefits.”
Marinoff estimated a potential loss of around $50 million per year.
He says he wouldn’t expect closures, but did say the system may have to offer fewer services.
”We’re talking about access to — about access to care for 970,000 children across the state of Michigan,” he said. “So these are some of the larger-scale things as a state that we need to understand could impact all of us in our communities.”