The Louisiana Primary Care Association is incredibly disheartened to see the passage of the “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” yesterday in our House of Representatives. As we have communicated with communities, advocates, partners, state legislators, and federal policymakers throughout the beginning of this year, Medicaid is a critical program for Louisiana’s patients and economy. With a projected loss of coverage for over 270,000 patients and an additional $4 billion cost to Louisiana’s state budget, this bill stands to affect every healthcare provider, business, and family in our state regardless of their current insurance status.
Community Health Centers (CHCs) serve every patient that walks into their clinic, regardless of their ability to pay or insurance status. Nearly 60% of the current patient population is covered by the Louisiana Medicaid program, making the program a critical source of funding for those CHCs to maintain regular operations, contribute to hiring and employee retention, and deliver comprehensive care. When patients inevitably begin losing health coverage, Community Health Centers will still provide services for them, but the clinics will not be appropriately reimbursed for services. This will severely strain their budgets, potentially leading to reduced hours, staff cuts, or even clinic closures due to an inability to cover operational costs.
Health centers are held to strict standards to maintain their FQHC status, and by law, they are required to reinvest profits back into their patient services. Under the current operations of Louisiana Medicaid, our CHCs have been able to expand to include a range of services outside of primary and preventative care. Most of Louisiana’s health centers offer Behavioral Health services, working to alleviate the state’s mental health crisis, and many have been able to include Dental services as well, providing a service that many low-income families do not receive. When faced with even slimmer margins due to patients losing coverage, these additional, critical, and life-saving services will be at risk of being reduced, and in some cases, eliminated.
What saddens us the most is knowing how this will affect our patients, their families, and their communities. Those who will lose coverage are not “able-bodied adults who should be working.” In Louisiana, Medicaid patients are working. In our state, 94.3% of adults who have Medicaid coverage are working either full or part-time, are ill or disabled, are taking care of their family, or are going to school. This is another burden on the tables of single-parent families, of those living with disabilities, or adults taking care of elderly relatives.
Community Health Centers are resilient, but under this additional burden on our patients, clinics, and state to comply with these changes, we know that our people will lose providers, they will lose healthcare access, and Louisiana will be worse for it.