Governor Rick Snyder faces a decision soon on whether to sign or veto a bill he doesn’t like. It deals with how the state raises money for the Medicaid program. A plan adopted by the Legislature scraps a tax on health insurance claims. The bill would replace it with a complicated new funding system.
Snyder administration officials say the federal government would probably reject it, and deny the state many millions of Medicaid dollars. But legislative leaders want to push the issue.
Kurt Weiss is with the State Budget Office. He says that’s a big risk.
“I guess you could make the case that trying is OK, but we’ve had conversations with the federal government already, and sort of have an indication that they would disallow this,” Weiss says.
Weiss says that would blow a giant hole in the state budget.
Republican state Senator Ken Horn, R-Frankenmuth, supports the plan. He says a veto would shift the responsibility to the governor to solve the problem.
“If the governor doesn’t sign the bill, then we need to make sure that we hear from them, from the state budget office and from the governor’s office, on how they plan on creating a long-term fix,” says Horn.
The bill would scrap a small tax on insurance claims, and make up the loss to the state’s general fund with a new tax on HMOs.
