Charging Medicaid Premiums Hurts Patients and State Budgets

Impact of Section 115 Waiver Series: As part of their Medicaid expansion programs, states can ask the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to waive certain requirements. States can submit a Section 1115 waiver, which is intended to let states test new benefit designs and new approaches for delivering health care—so long as they promote the objectives of the Medicaid program and don’t cost the federal government extra money. Unfortunately, many conservative states are trying to use the Section 1115 waiver process to impose ideologically driven requirements and restrictions on people in the Medicaid expansion program. These efforts have hurt patients and wound up costing the states money. 

This is the first in a series of analyses that examines the impact of these efforts by conservative states using data that states report to CMS. First up: How charging Medicaid patients premiums hurts their care and state budgets.