Republican senators released a new version of their health care proposal Sunday night aimed at winning support from a handful of still undecided senators.
But, there was also a pretty sweet deal for the state of Louisiana, home of one of the bill’s sponsors Sen. Bill Cassidy.
The legislation includes language that gives states that expanded Medicaid after December 2015, access to an additional $750 million a year between 2023 and 2026.
Experts at both the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Brookings Institution confirmed CNN’s understanding that the provision would only make two states eligible for the millions in funding: Montana and Louisiana.
That money, however, wouldn’t just be divided evenly – Louisiana would get tens of millions more because it’s population is larger, according to one expert.
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“This overall pot of money would be allocated between the two states according to the number of low-income people living in each state,” said Matt Fiedler, fellow at the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative on Health Policy.
“Since Louisiana’s total population is about 4.5 times that of Montana’s and Louisiana has a higher poverty rate than Montana, Louisiana would get the overwhelming majority of these funds,” he added.
A Cassidy spokesman said only that “no provisions included in Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson were created to benefit one particular state.”
