The bill passed by the U.S. House to repeal the Affordable Care Act, now being considered by the Senate, would make deep cuts to Medicaid — which threatens millions in special education dollars for local school districts.
The money pays for items such as therapy equipment, portable stair climbers, or a device that might help visually impaired students do their schoolwork, as well as certain aides.
Medicaid, the health insurance coverage for low-income and disabled individuals that is jointly paid for by states and the federal government, reimburses schools for health-related services for special education students.
In Pennsylvania, schools receive about $143 million annually for these services.
In other words, said Steve Robinson, spokesman for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, schools are mandated to meet the needs of special education students. The federal cuts would push costs to either the state or local communities.
“The state is going to be challenged to come up with those dollars,” he said.
“Under the proposed change, there could be restrictions to: hearing-impaired services, nursing services, occupational therapy services, personal care and physical therapy services, psychological and social work services, speech and language and specialized transportation services, among many other critical support systems,” said Casey Smith, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Education.
In a letter opposing the bill, the School Superintendents Association and a host of other organizations in the Save Medicaid in the Schools Coalition noted to congressional leaders that “school-based health services are mandated on the [s]tates and those mandates do not cease simply because Medicaid funds are capped by the [American Health Care Act]. As with many other unfunded mandates, capping Medicaid merely shifts the financial burden of providing services to the [s]tates.”
Pittsburgh Public Schools uses some of these funds to pay for things like care assistants for medically fragile students who might need one-on-one support and for programs such as the district’s CITY Connections, which helps students with disabilities ages 18-21, said Amy Filipowski, executive director of the program for students with execeptionalities at the district.
“We would lose that reimbursement as a district and have to fund that … on our own,” she said.
The bill, which cuts Medicaid spending by more than $800 billion, passed the House earlier this month in a narrow 217-213 vote.