Earlier today Tom highlighted the desire of Republicans in Congress to halt the use of Medicaid funds for “gun violence prevention” programs, with Rep. Andrew Clyde introducing the Medicaid Funds Integrity Act. As it turns out, though the Biden administration has allowed for Medicaid funds to be spent on community-based violence intervention efforts since 2021, even some blue states are critical of taking the federal dollars that could be flowing their way.
One part of Massachusetts’ latest gun control law established a state-level task force to look into tapping those federal funds, and now the panel has decided the state should stay away.
The task force, chaired by Public Health Commissioner Robbie Goldstein, said in a report to the state Legislature that a primary reason for the recommendation was cost. The implementation of a Medicaid reimbursement system would require “significant up-front costs” for providers that run the programs, the panel said, noting the current state budget “does not provide funding.”
Those anticipated costs include the development of new computer systems that can verify Medicaid eligibility, and track and report Medicaid claims-related activity, Goldstein wrote in a report to state lawmakers.
He said the plan could also impact equity in the community-based programs because small, nonprofit providers “may not have sufficient administrative and staffing resources to meet these requirements, creating a barrier to their ability to access Medicaid reimbursements.”
“The potential inability for smaller, grass-roots organizations to commit the resources necessary to become Medicaid providers, could reduce total CVP resources for the people, neighborhoods, and communities where they are needed most,” he wrote.
The panel also found that states that have bought into Biden’s effort, like California and New York, have seen just a trickle of federal funding “despite several years of effort and cost.”
The panel recommended that if the state eventually decides to go after Medicaid funds it should develop a plan that “mitigates the risks” outlined in the report and provide additional funding for start-up and administrative costs.
To be sure, the state is spending millions of dollars on gun violence prevention. In the current fiscal year, lawmakers budgeted $13 million for youth violence prevention grants, including $50,000 for the Massachusetts Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence and $25,000 for the SISU program in Lawrence, which works with at-risk youth.
While Clyde contends that the Medicaid funds are being spent on “furthering the Left’s unconstitutional gun control agenda,” not every violence prevention program is geared towards diminishing our Second Amendment rights. Ideally, those community-based intervention programs don’t involve putting any new laws in place, and instead target those most at-risk of both committing violent crimes and becoming a victim by giving them resources and the opportunity to turn their lives around.
Some of these programs, particularly those with a track record of accountability and success, deserve support. Still, that doesn’t mean that they should be funded by Medicaid, which is meant to provide access to healthcare for those with limited incomes. Funding community violence prevention efforts is mission creep, regardless of whether those programs target lawful gun owners or advance a gun control agenda.
The objections raised by the Massachusetts task force are more pragmatic than ideological, but that only proves there’s more than one reason to oppose the use of Medicaid funds on “gun violence prevention”. Massachusetts is already dealing with a budget deficit of hundreds of millions of dollars, and throwing money at the federal bureaucracy in the hopes of getting some funds in return doesn’t make much sense.
Then again, there’s very little in Chapter 135 that does make sense, so despite the recommendation by the task force, the anti-2A lawmakers in Boston may pursue those Medicaid funds regardless of the money that will be wasted.
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