James Lankford Explains How Potential Cuts To Medicaid Would Affect Oklahoma Hospitals

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During Wednesday's congressional forum in Tulsa, OK, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) discussed potential cuts to Medicaid and state funding in Oklahoma.

Transcript

00:00Can you talk a little bit about the fact that we are one of three states that has Medicaid

00:06enshrined in our constitution and maybe how Oklahomans are feeling right now or hospitals

00:15are feeling or providers about the potential of two cuts and what that's going to do to

00:20our state budget?

00:21Yeah, there's a lot of conversation about what would it mean on cuts in Medicaid.

00:27There's a couple things with this.

00:29One is our state does what a lot of states do.

00:32We have what we call a provider tax, okay, so don't gloss out on me, okay, give me just

00:37a second.

00:38I'll go faster.

00:39The state literally taxes long-term care facilities, hospitals, others, and say, you pay X amount,

00:46we'll put that into our state portion, and then we'll get more federal funds down, we'll

00:50get more federal funds down, and that'll come back to your hospital line.

00:53So the hospital typically breaks even or goes into black by what they donate in on the provider,

00:58tax, to what actually comes back to them.

01:01Can you view in hospital care?

01:03You can clarify this if you want to make it – I'll give you – make equal time to

01:07be able to answer that.

01:08Some states do more than others.

01:10Ours is 4 percent for our providers.

01:13Some states have as high as 6 percent.

01:15What that does is that pulls down more federal funds.

01:17Everybody is – everybody knows this game has happened for years.

01:20It was designed to say the state has a certain portion they put in, the federal government

01:24has a certain portion they put in.

01:25The states are going to providers and saying if we're going to get more Medicaid funds,

01:29we've got to kick in more.

01:30At some point, we've got to figure out how to be able to cap that, control that, manage

01:34that in some ways.

01:35And that's part of the debate.

01:38It's really going to push on some states like – I'm going to say in California and

01:42New York and Illinois, who have numbers like 6 percent provider taxes that are very, very

01:47high for those to be able to help push back to try to figure out how do we actually ask

01:52the state to do what the state said they agreed to do instead of them passing on an additional

01:56tax fund.

01:57Now, I told you not to gloss over on it, but that's one of the areas of Medicaid we're

02:01talking about and trying to be able to figure out what's the right number and the right

02:04percentage.

02:05We're all keenly aware, especially at rural hospitals.

02:08I've been home – this is now my – this is my third week this year to be back in Oklahoma.

02:14And, man, it's really nice to be back in Oklahoma because we've been in D.C. a lot.

02:18We've been moving a lot of things very rapidly there.

02:21But I spend a lot of time with rural hospitals as well while I've been home because they

02:25are the most vulnerable in the system and to be able to make sure that the system actually

02:30works for them.

02:31First thing side note on this, the rural hospitals I've spoken to, all of them have said Medicaid

02:36is now their best payer.

02:39Better than Medicare, better than commercial insurance, their best payer is Medicaid.

02:45That's a huge shift that's just occurred in the last few years in the way our state

02:50does the payments and what's actually happening on the federal side as well.

02:53And I've literally heard that from every single rural hospital that I'm talking to.

02:57So grateful that that part of the system is actually working better than it has in the past.

03:02So I hope that that's not fair.

03:04I hope you kind of hope that you're here.

03:05Thank you all.

03:06Thank you, guys.

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