The Senate health care bill (the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017) would fundamentally reform federal Medicaid payment.
As Washington Post columnist George Will has written, the bill’s Medicaid provisions, as crafted by Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Penn., “makes it this century’s most significant domestic policy reform.”
Will is correct. Medicaid financing needs reform. Jointly financed by the federal government and the states, federal taxpayers pay between 50 and 75 percent of state Medicaid costs for the blind, elderly, and disabled as well as women and children in poverty.