BARRE — President Donald Trump’s broad budget changes, which were signed into law last week, will be “devastating to rural America,” U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., said at a press conference Wednesday. She predicted large-scale loss of access to health care and food assistance for Vermonters, among other public services.
The White House has called parts of the bill “the largest tax cuts in history,” with substantial breaks on tips and overtime, and for adults over 60. Balint, however, urged Vermonters to consider the long-term effects of the bill.
In a release Tuesday, she referenced a congressional Joint Economic Committee Minority report that predicted 35,242 Vermonters could lose access to Medicaid coverage as a result of the bill. The Vermont Agency of Human Services has projected roughly 45,000 people total could lose insurance statewide.
Balint criticized the added administrative demands of the new Medicaid reforms, in particular the proof-of-work requirement. She called conservative claims that many covered patients are willfully unemployed “erroneous.”
“They’re the working poor, and they rely on Medicaid for their insurance,” she said.
A June 29 statement from the White House said the intent of the bill was “strengthening the integrity of Medicaid by eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.”
However, Ashley Berliner, the state director of health care policy, said her team’s focus was to maintain as high a rate of insurance coverage as possible.
“We don’t have any evidence to suggest that there are a bunch of people in the [Medicaid] expansion population who aren’t working and aren’t meeting other exemptions,” she said Wednesday.
Berliner added that the administrative burden itself will be costly for Vermonters. The new requirements will “impede people’s ability to get on and stay on Medicaid,” she said.
“They’re trying to make it difficult,’” Balint said Wednesday. “It is transparent.”
Balint also highlighted the potential cost of losing the flow of federal money into Vermont’s health care industry, citing a Congressional Budget Office report from December.
“When you suck that much money out of the health care system, it is going to drive up everyone’s premiums,” she said.
The state’s largest health insurance company, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Vermont, is already in financial peril in large part due to its administration of Medicare Advantage plans. Officials say the provider’s failure could cause the state’s health industry to collapse. This year already saw the company seek significant hikes in premium costs, some parts of which have been modified and approved by the Green Mountain Care Board.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Vermont spokesperson Sara Teachout said the effects for premium rates are impossible to predict.
“These are important questions that we do not have the answers to yet,” she wrote in an email.
The federal budget bill also contains provisions to reduce spending on the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill would result in a roughly $285 billion decrease for the program over the next decade. The report additionally detailed tighter restrictions on SNAP eligibility, such as extending the proof-of-work age requirement by a decade, to those 64 and under. The bill also appears to withdraw SNAP eligibility for some refugees and residents who have been granted asylum.
“Vermonters are already hungry,” Balint said. “It is a cruel, cruel bill.”
Anore Horton, the executive director of Hunger Free Vermont, said the state’s charitable food system is already “stretched beyond the limits.” Roughly 65,000 Vermonters currently participate in SNAP, according to Horton.
The new cuts could mean that 13,000 of them lose SNAP access, Horton told NBC5.
In the coming years, Balint said, the Vermont Legislature and Gov. Phil Scott’s administration will face “really tough decisions” in order to meet the basic needs of their constituents.
“There are no easy answers here,” Balint said.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the projected SNAP spending reductions over the next decade.
