{"id":36942,"date":"2021-06-25T18:07:54","date_gmt":"2021-06-26T01:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=36942"},"modified":"2021-06-25T18:07:54","modified_gmt":"2021-06-26T01:07:54","slug":"puerto-rico-presses-congress-to-prevent-medicaid-cliff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=36942","title":{"rendered":"Puerto Rico presses Congress to prevent ‘Medicaid cliff’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Puerto Rico Gov.\u00a0Pedro Pierluisi<\/a>\u00a0(D) said Thursday that a looming \u201cMedicaid cliff\u201d and a slew of political and economic challenges all come back to the island\u2019s status as a U.S. territory.<\/p>\n

The debate over status will remain at the core of the island’s politics indefinitely, he said, unless Puerto Rico becomes a state or a sovereign nation.<\/p>\n

“Whenever I’m told about prioritizing, I say the status issue permeates everything else. It is an existential issue. You always have to deal with this issue until you resolve it,” Pierluisi told The Hill in an interview.<\/p>\n

The latest issue to shine a spotlight on the deficiencies of the territorial arrangement with the U.S. is the allocation of Medicaid resources to the island’s more than 3 million residents.<\/p>\n

Why the concern:<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0Unlike all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico is not guaranteed a certain percentage of Medicaid resources in the federal government\u2019s annual budget. Puerto Rico is subject to capped federal spending and a fixed matching rate, meaning that not only does it get less money from the federal government than states, the formula doesn’t allow for additional funding.<\/p>\n

Once the funding is exhausted, there is no more.<\/p>\n

Without additional Congressional action, the island will lose the vast majority of its Medicaid financing which could result in reductions in coverage\u2014 a major problem given the\u00a0 long-term health and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

Beyond statehood:<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0Many opponents of statehood \u2014 those who want to remain a territory or seek independence \u2014 have also sought a better deal for territories on Medicaid and other social services, regardless of their opposition to a permanent union between Puerto Rico and the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Puerto Rico Gov.\u00a0Pedro Pierluisi\u00a0(D) said Thursday...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36942"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36943,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36942\/revisions\/36943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}