Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email <!-- Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ --></p><div class="a-wrap a-wrap-base a-wrap-8 alignwide"> <script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-9711960400701468" crossorigin="anonymous"></script> <!-- helitra_in2 --> <ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-9711960400701468" data-ad-slot="8404283406" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins> <script> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); </script></div> <p>By Jon Fleischman, Special for CalMatters</p> <figure> <img decoding="async" width=""1200"" height=""800"" src=""https://i0.wp.com/calmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/07262022_MLKHospital_PU_CM_04.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1"" class=""attachment-post-thumbnail" size-post-thumbnail="" wp-post-image="" alt=""A" person="" raises="" their="" right="" arm="" in="" the="" air="" and="" they="" lay="" on="" a="" medical="" bed="" an="" examination="" room="" at="" clinic.="" wears="" black="" cardigan="" yellow="" shirt.="" decoding=""async"" loading=""lazy"" https:="" /><figcaption>A Medi-Cal recipient gets her arm treated at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in Los Angeles on July 26, 2022. Photo by Pablo Unzueta for CalMatters</figcaption></figure> <p>This commentary was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.</p> <p>Guest Commentary written by</p> <p>Re: “Medicaid cuts stand to hit everyone (yes, even you). Here’s why”</p> <p>A recent CalMatters story warned that Medi-Cal cuts will raise costs for the privately insured. The reporting was solid, but it skipped the question that actually explains why any of this is happening.</p> <p>The federal government is $40 trillion in debt and runs annual deficits north of $1.8 trillion. Medicaid has been one of the fastest-growing pieces of that pile for a decade. It has expanded well beyond the population it was built to serve. </p> <p>Nobody in the story asked what happens if that growth keeps up for another 15 years. The story needed that context and didn’t have it. Part of the reason: Every source quoted has a direct stake in more Medicaid funding, from the hospital association to academics to advocacy groups.</p> <p>The story’s framing feeds the same growth problem. It treats work requirements as self-evidently harmful because verifying eligibility creates friction. That’s fair. Bureaucracies are blunt. But any means-tested program has to periodically confirm the people receiving benefits still qualify. A safety net that checks nothing indefinitely doesn’t stay targeted at the people it was built for — it just grows.</p> <p>Closer to home, the pattern is the same: Economists predict the federal cuts will cause a 1% to 2% premium bump, roughly $500 a year for a family. The bigger, more immediate hit is a new state tax on health plans Sacramento just passed, running about $100 a person. Lawmakers did that while everyone watched Washington. </p> <p>The story also invoked Martin Luther King Jr.- Harbor Hospital’s 2007 closure, which was about patient safety, not funding.</p> <p>None of this means uninsured and underinsured Californians don’t matter. But you cannot seriously discuss Medicaid spending without asking whether its trajectory is sustainable. At nearly $40 trillion in national debt, that question isn’t optional — for California or for Washington.</p> <p>This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.</p> <p> Copy HTML Source link grew Medicaid population serve
