A bill seeking to lift the cap on Medicaid payments to the Virgin Islands and other territories was introduced by Delegate Donna Christensen on the first day of the 107th Congress.
The bill is essentially the same as one Christensen and the delegates from Guam and American Samoa and the resident commissioner from Puerto Rico attempted to move in the last Congress. It would lift the cap on Medicaid payments to the territories and to increase the match, Christensen said.
For the most part, Medicaid is the only way elderly, low-income and disabled people receive medical care in the U.S. and its territories. However, territories like the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and Puerto Rico receive limited funding because they don’t directly contribute to the program in federal taxes.
In the Virgin Islands, about 15,000 people are eligible for Medicaid, according to V.I. Health Department statistics. Christensen and others who support lifting the cap, which currently stands at $670 per eligible person compared to $3,300 per person on the mainland, argue that it would mean better health care for residents of the territories and would free up local dollars for other pressing purposes.
"Increasing federal dollars to the territory for Medicaid will be one of my top priorities in this term as it has been throughout the entire time that I have been in Congress," she said. "Because of this, and because my fellow territorial representatives and I wanted to send a signal to the Congress and to the incoming Bush administration as to what our top priority collective is, I made it a priority to introduce my Medicaid cap bill on the first day of the 107th Congress."
In the closing months of the Clinton administration, Christensen, the other territorial delegates and the governors of the four U.S. territories made an unsuccessful attempt to get the Medicaid cap lifted — either entirely, or partially over the next five years.
Last year, Christensen and Delegate Robert Underwood of Guam met with the director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, Jack Lew. The meeting followed a request to Clinton by the leaders of the U.S. territories to increase by 20 percent the federal government’s share of Medicaid payments.
Christensen’s bill aims to increase the amount the federal government covers for Medicaid from the current 50 percent to 77 percent.
