Austin (1080 KRLD) - On April 16, the Biden Administration rejected the Texas 10-year 1115 Medicaid waiver extension agreement made in mid-December with the Trump Administration. It would have ensured billions of dollars in Medicaid funding for providers of healthcare for children, people with disabilities, and the elderly.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton fired back with a lawsuit to reinstate the waiver extension. Paxton contends the waiver rejection is an effort by President Biden to force the state to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act; something Texas Republican lawmakers have fought doing.
“The Biden Administration cannot simply breach a contract and topple Texas’s Medicaid system without warning. This disgusting and unlawful abuse of power aimed at sovereign states must end,” said Paxton.
“Not only does this violate agency regulations and threaten to rip a $30 billion hole in Texas’s budget, it was clearly intended to force our state into inefficiently expanding Medicaid under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This would be a disaster for our state, and yet President Biden seems intent on thrusting his bloated model of government on everyone—including Texas.”
In the April 16th letter from US Department of Health and Human Services Acting Director Elizabeth Richter to the Texas Medicaid Director Stephanie Stephens, it was made clear that Texas failed to complete the normal waiver application process and shouldn’t have had its application approved.
“We have determined that the state’s exemption request did not articulate a sufficient basis for us to conclude that approving the state’s emergency request for an exemption from the normal public notice process was needed to address a public health emergency or other sudden emergency threat to human lives, as required,” wrote Richter.
Read full letter here.
Read a copy of the Texas lawsuit here.