During his first administration, President Donald Trump’s top health officials gave North Carolina permission to use Medicaid money for social services not traditionally covered by health insurance. It was a first-in-the-nation experiment to funnel health care money into housing, nutrition, and other social services.

Some poor and disabled Medicaid patients became eligible for benefits, including security deposits and first month’s rent for housing, rides to medical appointments, wheelchair ramps, and even prescriptions for fresh fruits and vegetables.

Such experimental initiatives to improve the health of vulnerable Americans while saving taxpayers on costly medical procedures and expensive emergency room care are booming nationally. Without homes or healthy food, people risk getting sicker, becoming homeless, and experiencing even more trouble controlling chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.

Former President Joe Biden encouraged states to go big on new benefits, and the availability of social services exploded in states red and blue. Since North Carolina’s launch, at least 24 other states have followed by expanding social service benefits covered by Medicaid, the health care program for low-income and disabled Americans — a national shift that’s turning a system focused on sick care into one that prioritizes prevention. And though Trump was pivotal to the expansion, he’s now reversing course regardless of whether evidence shows it works.

In Trump’s second term, his administration is throwing participating states from California to Arkansas into disarray, arguing that social services should not be paid for by government health insurance. Officials at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which grants states permission to experiment, have rescinded its previous broad directive, arguing that the Biden administration went too far.

“This administration believes that the health-related social needs guidance distracted the Medicaid program from its core mission: providing excellent health outcomes for vulnerable Americans,” CMS spokesperson Catherine Howden said in a statement.

“This decision prevents the draining of resources from Medicaid for potentially duplicative services that are already provided by other well-established federal programs, including those that have historically focused on food insecurity and affordable housing,” Howden added, referring to food stamps and low-income housing vouchers provided through other government agencies.

Trump, however, has also proposed axing funding for low-income housing and food programs administered by agencies including the departments of Housing and Urban Development and Agriculture — on top of Republican proposals for broader Medicaid cuts.

The pullback has led to chaos and confusion in states that have expanded their Medicaid programs, with both liberal and conservative leaders worried that the shift will upend multibillion-dollar investments already underway. Social problems such as homelessness and food insecurity can cause — or worsen — physical and behavioral health conditions, leading to sky-high health care spending. Medical care delivered in hospitals and clinics, for instance, accounts for only roughly 15% of a person’s overall health, while a staggering 85% is influenced by social factors such as access to healthy food and shelter for sleep, said Anthony Iton, a policy expert on social determinants of health.

Health care experts warn the disinvestment will come at a price.

“It will just lead to more death, more suffering, and higher health care costs,” said Margot Kushel, a primary care doctor in San Francisco and a leading researcher on homelessness and health care.

The Trump administration announced in a March 4 memo that it was rescinding Biden-era guidance dramatically expanding experimental benefits known as health-related social needs. Federal waivers are required for states to use Medicaid funds for most nontraditional social services outside of hospitals and clinics.

Last month, the administration told states that these services, which can also include high-speed internet and storage units, should not be part of Medicaid.

Future waiver requests allowing Medicaid to provide social services — a liberal philosophy — will be considered on a “case-by-case basis,” the administration said. Rather, it has signaled a conservative shift toward requiring most Medicaid beneficiaries to prove that they’re working or trying to find jobs, which puts an estimated 36 million Americans at risk of losing their health coverage.

“What they’re arguing is Medicaid has been expanded far beyond basic health care and it needs to be cut back to provide only basic coverage to those most desperately in need,” said Mark Peterson, a health policy expert at UCLA. “They’re making the case, which is not widely shared by specialists in the health care field, that it’s not the job of taxpayers and Medicaid to pay for all this stuff outside the traditional heath care system.”

Although states have not received formal guidance to end their social experiments, Peterson and other health policy researchers expect the administration not to renew waivers, which typically run in five-year intervals. Worse, legal experts say programs underway could be halted early.

Evidence supporting social investments by Medicaid is still nascent. An expansion in Massachusetts that provided food benefits reduced ER visits and hospitalizations, for instance. But often, it’s a mixed bag.

California is going the biggest, investing $12 billion over five years to provide a slew of new services, from intensive case management to help people with severe behavioral health conditions to housing and food assistance through a pair of federal waivers. The most popular benefits provided by health insurers are those that help homeless people on Medicaid by placing them in apartments or securing beds in recovery homes, covering up to $5,000 for security deposits, and preventing eviction.

Since the CalAIM program launched in 2022, it has served only a small fraction of the state’s nearly 15 million Medicaid beneficiaries, with roughly 577,000 referrals for benefits. Yet it has improved and even saved the lives of some of those lucky enough to get help, including Eric Jones, a 65-year-old Los Angeles resident.

“When I got diabetes, I didn’t know what to do and I had a hard time getting to my medical appointments,” said Jones, who lost his housing this year when his mom died but received services through his Medi-Cal insurer, L.A. Care. “My case manager got me rides to my appointments and also helped me get into an apartment.”

California is considering making some of its social services permanent after the CalAIM waivers expire at the end of 2026. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration is adding more housing services, including up to six months of free rent under a third waiver approved by the Biden administration. Medi-Cal officials contended early evidence shows CalAIM has led to better care coordination and fewer hospital and ER visits.

“We are fully committed,” said Susan Philip, a deputy director for the state Department of Health Care Services, which administers the program. “We have invested so much.”

Health insurers, which deliver Medicaid coverage and receive greater funding to cover these additional benefits, say they’re worried the Trump administration will end or curtail the programs. “If we do things the same old way, we’re just going to generate the same old results — people getting sicker and health care costs continuing to rise,” said Charles Bacchi, president and CEO of the California Association of Health Plans, which represents insurers.

Industry leaders say the expansion is already changing lives.

“We believe wholeheartedly that housing is health, food is health, so seeing these programs disappear would be devastating,” said Kelly Bruno-Nelson, executive director of Medi-Cal for CalOptima Health, a health insurance provider in Orange County.

Oregon is also providing low-income Medicaid patients with a range of new services, including home-delivered healthy meals and rental payment assistance. Residents can even qualify for air conditioners, heaters, air filters, power generators, and mini fridges. State Medicaid officials say they remain committed to providing the benefits but worry about federal cuts.

“Climate change and housing instability are huge indicators of poor health,” said Josh Balloch, vice president of health policy and communications at AllCare Health, a Medicaid insurer in Oregon. “We hope to prove to the federal government that this is a good return on their investment.”

But even as the Trump administration curtails waivers, it is retaining discretion to provide social services in Medicaid, just on a smaller scale. Supporters say it’s fair to scrutinize where to draw the line on taxpayer spending, arguing that there isn’t always a direct health connection.

“We’re seeing these things increase, with the free rent, and we’re seeing some states pay for free internet, paying for furniture,” said Kody Kinsley, who previously served as North Carolina’s top health official. “We know there’s evidence for food and housing, but with all of these new benefits, we need to look closely at the evidence and the linkage to what actually drives health.”

Current North Carolina officials say they’re confident the new social services Medicaid provides in their state have resulted in better health and lower overall spending on expensive and acute care. Medicaid recipients there can even use the program to buy farm-fresh produce.

While it’s too soon to know whether these experiments have been effective elsewhere in the United States, early evidence in North Carolina shows promise: The state had saved $1,020 per participant a year into its experiment — operating in mostly rural counties — by reducing ER trips and hospitalizations.

State health officials also touted the economic benefits of driving business to family farms, home improvement contractors, and community-based organizations providing housing and social services.

“I welcome the challenge of demonstrating the effectiveness of our programs. It’s making for healthier people and healthier budgets,” said Jay Ludlam, deputy secretary for North Carolina’s Medicaid program. “Family farms that were on the verge of collapse after Hurricane Helene are now benefiting from a steady income while they also serve their community.”

This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation. 

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The post Housing, Nutrition in Peril as Trump Pulls Back Medicaid Social Services appeared first on kffhealthnews.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

The article presents a relatively balanced view of the Medicaid expansion efforts under both the Trump and Biden administrations, highlighting the shift in policy and the effects on states. While it notes the positive impact of social service initiatives introduced by Trump and expanded under Biden, it also criticizes Trump’s subsequent withdrawal from these programs. The focus on evidence from states like California and North Carolina, along with the discussion on the social determinants of health, suggests a lean toward more progressive policies on health care. However, the article still presents opposing views from conservative health policy experts, maintaining some balance in tone.

In Bustling NYC Federal Building, HHS Offices Are Eerily Quiet

NEW YORK — On a recent visit to Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan, some floors in the mammoth office building bustled with people seeking services or facing legal proceedings at federal agencies such as the Social Security Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In the lobby, dozens of people took photos to celebrate becoming U.S. citizens. At the Department of Homeland Security, a man was led off the elevator in handcuffs.

But the area housing the regional office of the Department of Health and Human Services was eerily quiet.

In March, HHS announced it would close five of its 10 regional offices as part of a broad restructuring to consolidate the department’s work and reduce the number of staff by 20,000, to 62,000. The HHS Region 2 office in New York City, which has served New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, was among those getting the ax.

Public health experts and advocates say that HHS regional offices, like the one in New York City, form the connective tissue between the federal government and many locally based services. Whether ensuring local social service programs like Head Start get their federal grants, investigating Medicare claims complaints, or facilitating hospital and health system provider enrollment in Medicare and Medicaid programs, regional offices provide a key federal access point for people and organizations. Consolidating regional offices could have serious consequences for the nation’s public health system, they warn.

“All public health is local,” said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. “When you have relative proximity to the folks you’re liaising to, they have a sense of the needs of those communities, and they have a sense of the political issues that are going on in these communities.”

The other offices slated to close are in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle. Together, the five serve 22 states and a handful of U.S. territories. Services for the shuttered regional offices will be divvied up among the remaining regional offices in Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, and Philadelphia.

The elimination of regional HHS offices has already had an outsize impact on Head Start, a long-standing federal program that provides free child care and supportive services to children from many of the nation’s poorest families. It is among the examples cited in the lawsuit against the federal government challenging the HHS restructuring brought by New York, 18 other states, and the District of Columbia, which notes that, as a result, “many programs are at imminent risk of being forced to pause or cease operations.”

The HHS site included a regional Head Start office that was closed and laid off staff last month. The Trump administration had sought to wipe out funding for Head Start, according to a draft budget document that outlines dramatic cuts at HHS, which Congress would need to approve. Recent news reports indicate the administration may be stepping back from this plan; however, other childhood and early-development programs could still be on the chopping block.

Bonnie Eggenburg, president of the New Jersey Head Start Association, said her organization has long relied on the HHS regional office to be “our boots on the ground for the federal government.” During challenging times, such as the covid-19 pandemic or Hurricanes Sandy and Maria, the regional office helped Head Start programs design services to meet the needs of children and families. “They work with us to make sure we have all the support we can get,” she said.

In recent weeks, payroll and other operational payments have been delayed, and employees have been asked to justify why they need the money as part of a new “Defend the Spend” initiative instituted by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, created by President Donald Trump through an executive order.

“Right now, most programs don’t have anyone to talk to and are unsure as to whether or not that notice of award is coming through as expected,” Eggenburg said.

HHS regional office employees who worked on Head Start helped providers fix technical issues, address budget questions, and discuss local issues, like the city’s growing population of migrant children, said Susan Stamler, executive director of United Neighborhood Houses. Based in New York City, the organization represents dozens of neighborhood settlement houses — community groups that provide services to local families such as language classes, housing assistance, and early-childhood support, including some Head Start programs.

“Today, the real problem is people weren’t given a human contact,” she said of the regional office closure. “They were given a website.”

To Stamler, closing the regional Head Start hub without a clear transition plan “demonstrates a lack of respect for the people who are running these programs and services,” while leaving families uncertain about their child care and other services.

“It’s astonishing to think that the federal government might be reexamining this investment that pays off so deeply with families and in their communities,” she said.

Without regional offices, HHS will be less informed about which health initiatives are needed locally, said Zach Hennessey, chief strategy officer of Public Health Solutions, a nonprofit provider of health services in New York City.

“Where it really matters is within HHS itself,” he said. “Those are the folks that are now blind — but their decisions will ultimately affect us.”

Dara Kass, an emergency physician who was the HHS Region 2 director under the Biden administration, described the job as being an ambassador.

“The office is really about ensuring that the community members and constituents had access to everything that was available to them from HHS,” Kass said.

At HHS Region 2, division offices for the Administration for Community Living, the FDA’s Office of Inspections and Investigations, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration have already closed or are slated to close, along with several other division offices.

HHS did not provide an on-the-record response to a request for comment but has maintained that shuttering regional offices will not hurt services.

Under the reorganization, many HHS agencies are either being eliminated or folded into other agencies, including the recently created Administration for a Healthy America, under HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said in a press release announcing the reorganization.

Regional office staffers were laid off at the beginning of April. Now there appears to be a skeleton crew shutting down the offices. On a recent day, an Administration for Children and Families worker who answered a visitor’s buzz at the entrance estimated that only about 15 people remained. When asked what’s next, the employee shrugged.

The Trump administration’s downsizing effort will also eliminate six of 10 regional outposts of the HHS Office of the General Counsel, a squad of lawyers supporting the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and other agencies in beneficiary coverage disputes and issues related to provider enrollment and participation in federal programs.

Unlike private health insurance companies, Medicare is a federal health program governed by statutes and regulations, said Andrew Tsui, a partner at Arnall Golden Gregory who has co-written about the regional office closings.

“When you have the largest federal health insurance program on the planet, to the extent there could be ambiguity or appeals or grievances,” Tsui said, “resolving them necessarily requires the expertise of federal lawyers, trained in federal law.”

Overall, the loss of the regional HHS offices is just one more blow to public health efforts at the state and local levels.

State health officials are confronting the “total disorganization of the federal transition” and cuts to key federal partners like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CMS, and the FDA, said James McDonald, the New York state health commissioner.

“What I’m seeing is, right now, it’s not clear who our people ought to contact, what information we’re supposed to get,” he said. “We’re just not seeing the same partnership that we so relied on in the past.”

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This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The post In Bustling NYC Federal Building, HHS Offices Are Eerily Quiet appeared first on kffhealthnews.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

The content focuses on criticizing the Trump administration’s decision to close regional offices of the Department of Health and Human Services, highlighting negative impacts on public health programs like Head Start and expressing concerns from public health advocates and state officials. It frames the closures as harmful to local health services and presents viewpoints that align with government support for social programs and strong federal-local collaboration. While it includes factual information and some acknowledgment of the administration’s stated intentions, the overall tone and perspective lean toward a center-left critique of federal downsizing in health-related government functions.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday proposed that California roll back health care for immigrants without legal status, saying the state needed to cut benefits for some to maintain core services across the board.

It’s a striking reversal for the Democrat, who had promised universal health care and called health coverage for immigrants the moral and ethical thing to do. But a $12 billion state budget deficit, potential federal spending cuts, and larger-than-expected Medi-Cal enrollment have forced him to dial back.

Newsom said he had no other choice but to call for major cost-cutting measures affecting how some immigrants are covered by Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, which covers about 15 million Californians.

“The challenge that we face this year and the challenge we will face for many years is on growth of our Medicaid system, Medi-Cal,” Newsom told reporters at his budget presentation. “Instead of rolling back the program, cutting people off for basic care, we have to adjust the comprehensive nature of the care.”

California is one of seven states that offer health coverage to low-income adults regardless of immigration status, and that has put the program in the political crosshairs of national Republicans. The latest U.S. House proposal would cut Medicaid funding by 10 percentage points for states that provide coverage for immigrants without legal status — an approach Newsom on Wednesday described as legally questionable. Meanwhile, the Trump administration cited California’s health coverage of noncitizens as an example of states “gaming the system” when it issued a proposed rule Monday to overhaul Medicaid provider taxes.

Some 1.6 million immigrants — most without legal status — are enrolled in Medi-Cal. Federal law prohibits Medicaid dollars from being used to cover unauthorized residents, meaning California must foot the bill for the vast majority of their health care. And those costs have ballooned.

Newsom cautioned that California, like other states, could soon be in a more dire budget situation if Republicans advance their proposal to cut Medicaid. That plan includes work requirements and would cap taxes levied on providers that help states draw additional federal money. However, the governor’s budget proposal was silent on potential federal cuts.

The $321.9 billion budget proposes a freeze in Medi-Cal enrollment for immigrants 19 and older without legal status, starting Jan. 1. Beginning in 2027, immigrants 19 and older in the country illegally, as well as those with legal residency for less than five years, would be required to pay $100 monthly premiums to maintain coverage.

The Newsom administration estimated those two moves would save the state $5.4 billion by the 2028-29 fiscal year. The governor also called for eliminating dental and long-term care benefits for those without legal status and for legal residents who arrived in the U.S. less than five years ago, according to California Department of Finance spokesperson H.D. Palmer.

The changes would not apply to the roughly 217,000 children and young adults without legal status covered by Medi-Cal. Those 18 and under were the first to receive Medi-Cal coverage, in 2016. Children are generally healthier and require less care, and a KFF Health News analysis showed that, in many cases, children lacking legal status were cheaper to cover than citizens.

Maria, a street vendor from Los Angeles, said the monthly premium alone would force her and others to forgo care.

“They say they are one of the largest economies, but they don’t want to help us,” said Maria, who didn’t want to give her full name, out of fear of retaliation from immigration authorities. “We are contributing to the state. It’s not fair that we, the poor, have to pay what we don’t have.”

“Where am I going to get the $100?” Maria asked.

Federal law prohibits charging the poorest Medicaid enrollees a premium, and Newsom’s $100 monthly payment would be considered unaffordable for current beneficiaries, said Laurel Lucia, director of the health care program at the University of California-Berkeley Labor Center.

Newsom is proposing a $194.5 billion Medi-Cal budget for 2025-26. Lawmakers have until June 15 to pass the budget. Democratic leaders signaled their intent to protect health care for the state’s poorest residents.

The governor and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas blamed fiscal headwinds brought on by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which they said had led to a massive $16 billion dip in state tax revenue forecasts since April. But Medi-Cal spending surged well before the tariffs took effect. State costs to cover Californians with “unsatisfactory immigration status” — those without status and legal residents who have been here less than five years — is roughly $10.8 billion per year, up from the $6.4 billion officials projected in November. The federal government pays $1.2 billion of that to cover mandated emergency and pregnancy care.

“It’s laughable that he’s trying to blame Trump for anything,” Republican Assembly member Joe Patterson, who sits on the Assembly Budget Committee, said of Newsom. “He overpromised to them, and he’s pulling the carpet out from underneath them.”

Other states that have extended coverage to immigrants are also struggling with escalating costs. Minnesota, for example, originally projected that 5,700 residents without legal status would sign up for the state Medicaid program, known as MinnesotaCare, at a cost of $200 million. Both figures have increased roughly threefold.

Illinois is ending services for adult immigrants, except seniors, on July 1, citing higher-than-anticipated enrollment. The mostly state-funded health plan will stop covering around 30,000 noncitizens ages 42 to 64, including those living in the country without authorization.

Newsom said Wednesday that without a suite of his proposed changes to Medi-Cal, program costs could grow by an additional $10 billion through June 2026 and would “contribute significantly to the structural imbalance in future years.”

But consumer advocates and lawmakers said the move is a betrayal of the governor’s commitment to bring California closer to universal health care and warned it would push immigrants into costly emergency room care. Sen. María Elena Durazo, a Democrat who championed the Medi-Cal expansion, said California shouldn’t single out immigrants to solve its budget deficit.

“I don’t agree that we should be isolating and abandoning and separating a particular group of Californians, as if they are responsible for the problem,” Durazo said. “I don’t care what you call them, they work, they contribute.”

This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation. 

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The post Newsom’s Pitch as He Seeks To Pare Down Immigrant Health Care: ‘We Have To Adjust’ appeared first on kffhealthnews.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

The article provides a factual, balanced overview of Governor Newsom’s proposal to reduce health care benefits for undocumented immigrants amid budget shortfalls. It highlights the governor’s previous commitment to universal health care and the difficult fiscal constraints prompting the policy shift, while including perspectives that criticize the proposed cuts as a betrayal of progressive values. The coverage references Democratic leaders and immigrant advocates who emphasize inclusivity and fairness, alongside Republican criticism of Newsom’s decisions. Overall, the piece reflects a slight left-of-center leaning through its emphasis on social welfare and immigrant rights, typical of many public health-focused news sources, yet it maintains an objective tone with multiple viewpoints presented.