The new Department of Government Efficiency can't go after Medicare or Social Security. That leaves Medicaid in a vulnerable position.
At least three U.S. lawmakers said on Tuesday healthcare providers were blocked from the Medicaid payment portal after the Trump administration announced a federal funding pause, even as the White House said the program was exempted.
The online system for federal health funding warned of delays due to executive orders after the Trump administration announced a freeze.
The outage at least temporarily jeopardized payments the federal government makes to state programs, and sowed uncertainty for patients, doctors, hospitals and others.
The Medicaid website is down, but the portal is expected to be back up shortly, according to the White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. She wrote on X that no payments have been affected and are still being processed and sent.
A judge temporarily blocked implementation of a sweeping White House effort to pause potentially trillions of dollars in federal grants, loans and other financial-assistance programs, a directive that created chaos as states struggled to access funding portals dealing with Medicaid,
The memorandum from the Office of Management and Budget said that the hold would not impact Medicare, Social Security benefits or other payments that are “provided directly to individuals,” but that exception still left exposed trillions of dollars in spending on programs that are primarily routed through third parties before reaching Americans.
Medicaid, the health care program for low-income people and families, is jointly administered by the federal and state government, which also share costs.
At least 20 states, including New York, were reportedly locked out of their Medicaid reimbursement systems after President Donald Trump's administration announced a federal funding freeze on Tuesday.
Federal health researchers, nonprofits and programs for early childhood education reported that their access to federal funds had gone down, raising alarms about access to jobs, health care services,
Karoline Leavitt confirmed Tuesday afternoon the downed portals after multiple reports from lawmakers that their states could not get access to Medicaid dollars.