Paragon Health Institute Icon White

Team Biden’s Latest Welfare Expansion: Medicaid Payments for Housing, Food, even Furniture

Shutterstock 2146454883 10
Director Medicaid and Health Safety Net Reform Initiative at Paragon Health Institute
A nationally recognized health services expert and government reformer, Gary D. Alexander is head of the Medicaid and Health Safety Net Initiative at the Paragon Health Institute.
Director at Public Health and American Well-Being Initiative
Joel M. Zinberg, M.D., J.D. is the Director of the Public Health and American Well-Being Initiative at Paragon Health Institute, and a senior fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute. A native New Yorker, he recently completed two years as General Counsel and Senior Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers in the Executive Office of the President.

The latest front in the Biden administration’s crusade to bypass the congressional appropriations process and expand the welfare state comes in the form of the medicalization of everyday life through Medicaid coverage of “health-related social needs.”

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently approved three section 1115 demonstration initiatives that allow Oregon, Massachusetts and Arizona to use Medicaid funds to pay nonmedical expenses such as housing supports (rent, relocation expenses, furniture), meals, air conditioning and air purifiers “during climate emergencies” and transportation services.

CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure argues such measures are needed “to address the root social causes of health concerns, like lack of access to nutritious food and housing insecurity.”

This is an unnecessary and potentially enormous expansion of Medicaid, the government-funded health program for low-income families, children and the disabled — and, in Medicaid expansion states, low-income adults. Medicaid covers roughly one in four Americans. It is financed partly by the federal government (about two-thirds on average) and partly by the individual states. States have leeway in spending their portion, but strict rules limit how they can use the federal chunk.

The full article can be found in The New York Post.

Related Content

Subscribe

Sign up now for your health policy updates.

Name(Required)
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.