Tag Archives: Protect Our Care

‘A Travesty’: Trump Restricting Covid-19 Relief Funds From Hospitals Serving Nation’s Poorest

“Trump is using hospital bailout fund money to disproportionately help high revenue hospitals, and leave safety-net systems in the lurch.”

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 5-4-2020

Service members assigned to the Javits New York Medical Station perform an X-ray scan on a COVID-19 patient in the facility’s intensive care unit, April 18, 2020.. (U.S. Army Photo by Sgt. Deonte Rowell)

Public health experts, state officials, and frontline medical workers are sounding the alarm and demanding an urgent change of course as the Trump administration disproportionately allocates Covid-19 relief funds to higher-revenue hospitals while restricting the flow of aid to providers that primarily serve low-income people.

The Los Angeles Times reported late last week that the Trump administration’s “program to aid hospitals and doctors on the front lines of the coronavirus crisis is leaving behind the nation’s Medicaid safety net—the pediatricians, mental health providers, and hospitals that serve the poorest patients. Continue reading

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‘Cruelty Is the Point’: Trump Takes Aim at Medicaid With Plan That Could Harm Millions

“The president’s war on healthcare knows no bounds.”

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 1-24-2020

President Donald Trump speaks during an event on kidney health at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center on July 10, 2019 in Washington, D.C. Screenshot: YouTube

The Trump administration is reportedly planning to intensify its assault on Medicaid by granting certain states permission to convert federal funding for the program into block grants, a move critics slammed as a cruel and likely illegal attack on vulnerable people.

Politico reported Thursday that the plan, which could be finalized as early as next week, would allow the 37 states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act to seek waivers to convert funding into fixed sums that could limit states’ flexibility to increase spending in response to public need. Continue reading

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