Trump Ignores ‘Pleas’ To Expand Medicaid To Fight COVID-19

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In a time of national public health struggles, what’s at the top of the priority list for the Trump administration? Ideology, apparently. The Los Angeles Times is reporting that weeks after the Coronavirus first appeared in the U.S., and following “mounting pleas from California and other states,” the Trump administration was still largely flatly refusing to sign off on any expansion of Medicaid to help fight the Coronavirus outbreak. Both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations have previously handed down approvals for Medicaid expansion during situations like the aftermath of the devastating Hurricane Katrina and the swine flu outbreak — but the Trump team was refusing to act.

As the Times explains it:

‘[M]onths into the current global disease outbreak, the White House and senior federal health officials haven’t taken the necessary steps to give states simple pathways to fully leverage the mammoth safety net program to prevent a wider epidemic.’

The possibilities that have been sought include a change to make it easier to sign people up for Medicaid so that they can get testing and/or treatment for Coronavirus if they’re uninsured. So far, there’s only been a change to make it easier to enroll patients if they’re at a hospital — where they could, of course, be exposed to the Coronavirus. Thanks to the Trump administration’s stonewalling, states have also been delayed in their efforts “to bring on new medical providers, set up emergency clinics [and] begin quarantining and caring for homeless Americans at high risk from the virus.” Besides the obvious risk to the individuals, any untreated yet infected person could help spread the Coronavirus through the community, where vulnerable people could encounter it — and the U.S. is already at 41 confirmed Coronavirus deaths and counting.

A major fix for the situation could be a declaration of national emergency from President Trump, but he’s largely refused to sound any alarms surrounding the Coronavirus situation, opting to instead insist that even negative coverage of the illness is some kind of conspiracy to make him look bad. On Friday, there was finally a reported emergency declaration on the way.

An emergency declaration would be necessary prior to waivers like those allowing less time-consuming scrutiny of Medicaid applicants prior to confirmed enrollment. In the meantime, current Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services chief Seema Verma has already established herself as “a champion of efforts by conservative states to trim the number of people enrolled in Medicaid,” the Times notes, which complicates things on both sides of a potential Coronavirus emergency declaration.

Trump hasn’t shied away from declaring a national emergency when it’s suited him in the past — he has a long-running emergency declaration in place over the southern border immigration situation, despite the fact that there’s no pressing security threat there.

In this situation, there is a real, actual threat to Americans — 1,635 cases of the Coronavirus and counting have already been reported in the U.S. But Trump doesn’t seem overly fazed — and he’s even stuck to belligerent criticism of those, like Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, who’ve criticized his administration’s Coronavirus response. As the national emergency spread, Trump mocked Inslee — an official on the front lines — as a “snake.”