Health care leaders say Medicaid cuts would further strain state hospitals and clinics

Yahoo

20-03-2025

Joel Williams, who has been patient at Hennepin Healthcare for 11 years, speaks to media, lawmakers and health care leaders at a press conference in Minneapolis on March 20, 2025. Williams relies on Medicare and Medicaid to pay for his heath care and group home. "Today we're speaking out because we have to speak for the people who don't have a voice," Williams said. Photo by Madison McVan/Minnesota Reformer.
Leaders of Hennepin Healthcare, who oversee the state's largest emergency room, fear federal cuts to Medicaid will increase the number of patients coming to the emergency department with serious, preventable conditions.
But if Congressional Republicans want to achieve their goal of extending tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy while leaving areas like defense and Social Security unscathed, they will almost certainly have to cut federal spending on Medicaid, the federal-state partnership that provides health insurance to low-income and disabled Americans.
Democratic U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar and Kelly Morrison, a physician, joined Hennepin Healthcare leaders and patients Thursday at one of the health care provider's downtown Minneapolis buildings — across the street from the already-overwhelmed Hennepin County Medical Center — to raise awareness of the potential impacts of the proposed cuts.
'Medicare and Medicaid funds just about everything I do,' said Joel Williams, who has been a patient at Hennepin Healthcare for 11 years.
The programs cover his group home, he said, and paid for a new kidney.
One-fifth of Minnesotans are enrolled in Medical Assistance, Minnesota's Medicaid program, on par with national enrollment. One in 3 births in Minnesota are covered by Medicaid, and more than half of nursing home residents are enrolled in the program.
At Hennepin Healthcare, 62% of ER patients are covered by Medicaid, said chief of emergency medicine Dr. Tom Wyatt.
Medicaid pays for preventative services that can help keep people out of emergency rooms, Wyatt said. When diabetics can't access insulin, they may come to his department with life-threatening diabetic ketoacidosis. Patients who can't get their blood pressure medications may suffer a stroke.
'Those conditions are preventable if they have access to primary care,' Wyatt said.
The health care system also offers behavioral health services to Medicaid recipients, which can help patients keep mental health conditions and substance abuse issues in check, said Hennepin Healthcare CEO Jennifer DeCubellis.
Because the cost of Medicaid is shared between the federal and state government, cuts to federal spending would force Minnesota leaders to choose whether to spend extra money to maintain the same level of coverage, or to cut services.
State leaders may not have much of a choice; Minnesota's budget picture is already bleak, with spending outpacing revenues, and a deficit on the horizon — and many of Trump's proposed federal spending cuts could exacerbate the budget problems. Medical Assistance spending dwarves spending on every state program except education, and continues to increase as Minnesotans age and costs — including worker pay — go up.
The Medicaid cuts proposed by Congressional Republicans are already getting fierce pushback, including from some unlikely places: Minnesota Republicans in the Legislature wrote to President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, asking them to preserve Medicaid.
Indeed, Medicaid cuts are politically volatile; many of the recipients are the rural and elderly Americans that comprise Trump's base. More than 75% of Americans have a favorable view of Medicaid, according to a January 2025 poll.
But Trump's desired tax cuts aren't possible without significant cuts to Medicaid and other safety net programs, like SNAP, which helps low-income families pay for food.
'The whole reason we are here is because the Trump-Vance administration and their unelected, unaccountable benefactor-advisor Elon Musk are looking for ways to make the math work so that they can get tax cuts for billionaires,' Morrison said. 'It's really that simple.'