Yanking Medicaid from states that mandate abortion coverage in private insurance plans would result in that entire state’s health care coverage being severely impacted, instantly dumping everyone on Medicaid from coverage through no fault of their own. This is strong-arming and coercion, and disproportionately affects the most vulnerable among us – children, low-income families, the elderly, and the disabled. (And do recall that covering abortion with insurance – since abortion is a medical term – is really just requiring insurance to cover pregnancy-related complications resulting in abortion; meaning that women who miscarry for any reason or have ectopic pregnancies won’t be covered by insurance for those items if their states cave to the government’s mafia tactics here.)

Another consequence would be that healthcare providers in states that lose Medicaid funding may face financial difficulties. Medicaid often reimburses for services provided to low-income patients, and losing those funds would strain providers who rely on that revenue, potentially resulting in staffing cuts, reduced services, or closures of clinics and hospitals, particularly in underserved areas.

Further, do you want state sovereignty, or don’t you, Heritage Foundation? States have historically regulated their own health insurance markets, including what services insurers must cover. By withdrawing Medicaid funds, the federal government would be punishing states for exercising their rights to regulate insurance coverage within their borders. States affected by this would be California, New York, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Maine, and Vermont. According to Medicaid enrollment by state³¹ numbers, this would instantly dump 26,765,270 Americans off of their health care coverage.

Full contextual analysis of Section 3.5: Department of Health and Human Services here.