Medicaid Cuts Could Impact Schools

Part of the Trump administration’s budget plan includes an $800 billion cut to Medicaid.

The Medicaid program doesn’t just pay for healthcare. Medicaid funding helps schools pay for equipment, personnel and programming required for some students, usually those with disabilities.

Putnam County Schools Director Jerry Boyd said those dollars go to cover needs schools have to fill under federal and state law.

“Resources, specific types of equipment, other ancillary services, like physical therapy and things like that that most people don’t even connect the fact that those are expectations, depending on the needs of the student that have been laid out at the federal level,” Boyd said.

Medicaid offsets the cost, but doesn’t cover it entirely, Boyd said. So local and state dollars are already making up the difference.

“Funding sources like that help us offset, locally, costs that we’re responsible for anyway and when those get reduced or eliminated, the shift goes even more and more to local and that’s exactly what will happen,” Boyd said.

The congressional budget process has just begun. Final approval of the budget rests with Congress.