Congress may delay Medicaid cuts due to Katrina

Congress will have to weigh the Bush administration’s desire to cut projected Medicaid spending by $10 billion over the next five years with the need to provide more coverage to people who have lost health care because of Hurricane Katrina, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Monday.

Frist, a heart and lung transplant surgeon who is considered a possible Republican presidential candidate for 2008, said the purpose of the proposed cuts was to slow annual growth in the federal-state health-care program for the poor from about 7.4 percent to 7.1 percent by reducing waste, fraud and abuse. But spending cuts that result in “cutting back on care… would be absolutely wrong,” he said.

Although the Bush administration last week announced that states would “not be penalized” for accepting evacuees from Hurricane Katrina who need Medicaid or children’s health insurance coverage, Frist said Congress has not yet decided whether the federal government will cover 100 percent of the states’ expenses.

Read the rest of the story as reported in the Palm Beach Post.com.