CIE hosts discussion on Medicaid and SNAP

By Francisco Omar Fernandez Rodriguez

Arts & Features Editor

The Center for Inclusive Excellence (CIE) hosted Diversity Dialogues “SNAP, Medicaid, & the New War on Poverty” on Oct 22.

Suzanne Curry, the director of policy initiatives at Health Care For All, and Victoria Negus, a policy advocate at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, spoke at the event.

The three programs Curry focused on during the discussion were Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplaces.

Curry said, “Medicaid is a state-federal partnership, so the state and the federal government need to pay into it, and it’s generally for low-income individuals and families.

“In Massachusetts, our Medicaid program is MassHealth. It’s actually our combined Medicaid and children’s health insurance program, but for simplicity’s sake, I’m just going to call it our Medicaid program,” she said.

She added it is important for historically marginalized populations to be able to access health care.

She discussed the impacts of the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

“This was all to pay for and make permanent the Trump tax cuts,” Curry said.

One of the effects of the bill is “the largest cuts to Medicaid in the program’s history,” she said.

She said many lawfully present immigrants who used to be eligible no longer qualify “under the federal definition. So, states wouldn’t be able to get federal reimbursement for certain lawfully present immigrants for all three programs.”

U.S. citizens and some legal permanent residents remain eligible, she said. 

Eligibility for Green Card holders depends on the state they reside in and how long they’ve held their card, she added. 

Federal work requirements for Medicaid are going up, which, in the past, other states have done, Curry said.

Everyone on Medicaid must work 80 hours a month, though it can be in volunteer work or education, she added.

She said more requirements mean more paperwork, which leads to people losing coverage for administrative reasons.

ACA Marketplaces can be state- or federal-based, she said. In Massachusetts, it’s state-based and called the Health Connector, she added.

One of the ACA topics under debate is enhanced premium tax credits, which are subsidies for monthly insurance costs that will end Dec. 31 unless Congress decides to extend them, Curry said.

Many people who use the ACA Marketplace will see higher premiums if these subsidies end, she added.

“SNAP is a federal nutrition program. It helps one in six residents in Massachusetts put food on the table - one in eight nationally. It is the backbone of our entire social safety net in addition to Medicaid,” Negus said.

In Massachusetts, your income must be below 200% of the federal poverty level to receive SNAP, she said.

The average SNAP benefit is $6 a day, she added.

“It is a very woefully insufficient benefit in every single county in Massachusetts. The SNAP benefit amount doesn’t even pay for the average cost of a meal in the Commonwealth,” Negus said.

“For every bag of food [provided by] emergency food providers, … SNAP provides nine for every one of those,” Negus said.

In Massachusetts, if the shutdown doesn’t end by Oct. 31, November SNAP benefits won’t go out unless either the federal or state government intervenes, she said.

She added the federal government can release the money in their contingency fund to the states to pay for SNAP.

The bill expanded a preexisting work requirement, she added.

Non-exempt adults must prove they work, or they will lose SNAP after three months, according to the slideshow Negus presented.

Negus said, “[It] doesn’t actually matter if there’s no jobs where you live, or if you can’t get there, or you have other sort of real life challenges - you get cut off.”

Studies since 1996 have shown when people are cut off from SNAP, their employment outcomes don’t improve, she said.

The bill also cuts the option states had to waive the three month time limit in areas with insufficient jobs unless unemployment is 10% or higher, she said.

She added these include refugees, asylees, victims of trafficking, victims of domestic violence, and other legal immigrants.

“Undocumented folks have never been eligible for SNAP, despite what you might hear from our current president. They have been categorically ineligible forever,” she said.

Negus said the Department of Transitional Assistance has always gotten 50% of their cost reimbursed by the federal government. But starting this fall, that drops to 25% reimbursement.

“That’s a wonky way of saying Congress wanted to slash and burn the tools that states have to improve how the program is run by incentivizing states to shrink the dollars that they invest in running the program,” Negus said.

She added it’s appropriate for the program to be highly audited, but the majority of cases related to the PER are mistakes.

If the PER is higher than what the federal law allows, “the state has a price tag for two years, October 2027 through September 2029, and it’s non-negotiable,” Negus said.