Your Money Or Your Life: Federal Policies And Health Disparities In Puerto Rico

Discussions in Washington continue to focus on creating a fiscal board rather than on the underlying structural causes of the crisis. While P.R. politicians can and should be held responsible for the emission of government debt, there is consensus that a fiscal watchdog alone won’t solve the problem. One of the principal, and often unnamed, causes of the P.R. fiscal crisis is a federal policy which provides unequal treatment to the territories for Medicaid funding. As will be explained in this article, Medicaid parity alone would have covered the P.R. government’s entire primary cumulative deficit. Federal Medicaid Funding Caps and the reduced Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) for Puerto Rico were probably developed by Congress as a cost containment measure. However, due to the externalities produced by migration, federal and state governments have paid out more in Medicaid spending for those who have migrated from Puerto Rico to the States since the launch of the P.R. Government Health Insurance Program than they would have for equal treatment for Puerto Rico under the Medicaid program. The purpose of this article is to explain how the Puerto Rican crisis affects U.S. citizens, to detail the impact of unfair Medicaid and health-related funding on P.R. government finances, and to provide recommendations for moving beyond the current impasse. The Impact Of The Crisis On Our Most Vulnerable Citizens On May 1, 2016, Governor Garcia-Padilla declared a moratorium on...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Costs and Spending Equity and Disparities Featured Global Health Medicaid and CHIP Medicare Public Health Congress immigrants Puerto Rico U.S. citizens Zika Source Type: blogs