Azar will be alongside Verma at Thursday’s announcement, said three people with knowledge of the event, in a display of support for her proposal. HHS and CMS declined to comment.
Aware of criticism that any cap on Medicaid funding would target vulnerable patients, Verma will stress during Thursday’s announcement that her plan, by focusing just on the Obamacare expansion, will not affect the poorest or disabled patients. Verma has long argued Medicaid expansion is siphoning away resources from the most vulnerable patients covered by the program. CMS will frame the block grant as a way for states to reinvest any savings into care improvements for Medicaid beneficiaries.
States will be required to report their performance in real time, such as whether Medicaid patients see declines in access to providers or health outcomes, which one official said would allow the administration to gauge whether the block grant was truly working to make adults healthier. One official said this could help CMS guard the program against promised legal challenges from advocates who say the administration doesn’t have the authority to cap Medicaid spending.
A previous overhaul authored by Verma — a sweeping effort to impose work requirements on Medicaid beneficiaries — has largely been stalled after a federal judge said the health department failed to consider whether the work rules would meet a statutory program goal of improving patient health. However, officials are still bracing for the new block-grant plan to be tied up in litigation, perhaps for the remainder of the president’s current term. Some officials also have raised questions about the need to hold the announcement amid the Wuhan coronavirus virus outbreak and closely ahead of Trump’s State of the Union address next week.Sign UpBy signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.