- by Peter Farmer
- The Guardian
- Issue #2201
Photo: Gage Skidmore – flickr.com (CC BY-SA 2.0)
The Trump administration will withhold a total of US $2.2bn to Medicaid funding in California, as well as $550m to Minnesota.
The funding cut will affect in-home supportive services (IHSS), which allow people to care for family members with disabilities without losing their jobs.
One carer described the cuts as “just cruel.”
The cuts are based on allegations of fraud, although Trump government officials haven’t bothered to say exactly what that fraud was. One law academic described what the government was doing as merely shifting the burden of proof to states.
Similar to Australia’s NDIS and Aged Care packages, in-home services in the US involve a lot of form-filling, followed by a series of meetings and then a home visit by a social worker. The social worker then visits again annually. It’s a rigorous process, partly in order to prevent fraud and abuse of the funding – exactly what Trump’s health officials are alleging without providing details.
The cuts may well be politically motivated, with one law professor pointing out that the cuts and resulting court cases are only happening to ‘blue states’ (states which vote Democrat).
