BOISE, ID – To cut the Idaho Medicaid budget, state lawmakers are drafting bills to cut funds for home care services for people with disabilities and to repeal Medicaid expansion.
This year, the Idaho Legislature is pursuing steep spending cuts after years of tax cuts. The chairs of the Legislature’s Health and Welfare committees shared the plans for Medicaid cuts on Thursday with the Legislature’s budget committee, called the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, or JFAC for short.
JFAC exempted Medicaid from its votes for additional, across-the-board 1-2% cuts for most state agencies. But Gov. Brad Little called for $22 million in additional Medicaid cuts, sharing a list of options that includes ending services like dental coverage or services that help people with disabilities live outside institutional settings.
Rep. John Vander Woude, chairman of the House Health and Welfare Committee, told JFAC on Thursday that his committee has a bill drafted to cut $21 million from residential habilitation, a service that provides in-home support for people with disabilities.
Sen. Melissa Wintrow, a Boise Democrat, said she worried cutting that much could hurt businesses that raised their pay rates.
“We probably needed to go through that with a finer tooth comb before we do that, because we could be having a negative impact on services,” Wintrow said.
That was on the governor’s list of options for cuts. Cuts to rates providers for the program, which is also called supported living, could reduce the state’s general fund spending by $21.8 million, according to an internal budget document by the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.
Vander Woude also said he’s working on drafting a bill to repeal Medicaid expansion. He said the bill would end expansion as it currently exists at the end of the 2026 calendar year, and replace it the next day with a program that caps enrollment and has work requirements.
“That would control some of the costs without taking everybody out,” Vander Woude told JFAC.
Those policies aren’t new ideas, and they’d likely need federal approval to take effect.
Work requirements were part of the Legislature’s major Medicaid cost cutting bill that became law last year. An enrollment cap was part of a bill that would’ve likely repealed Medicaid expansion.
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