On Friday, NJTV News put together a segment about the national proposals to turn Medicaid health coverage into a block grant – a proposal that Gov. Christie has been promoting as something that will give states “much greater flexibility.” But as NJPP senior policy analyst Ray Castro notes, capping the program’s funding, which is essentially what shifting to block grants will do, could harm hundreds of thousands of New Jersey’s most vulnerable residents.
“We now receive about $3 billion additional in the Medicaid program,” he says. “The Medicaid program itself is around a $15 billion program so even if you get a one or two percent cut that’s hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s a cost that’s shifted to the states. The original proposal for block grants down in Washington cut the program by one trillion dollars nationwide over ten years, so you can see what the disastrous consequence of that could be for our state.”
