Some of the 300,000 people who are at risk of losing health insurance in Virginia will fall through the cracks when they fail to prove their eligibility every six months instead of every year. That's just one of the provisions of a new federal law that goes into effect in January.
Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan is a Democrat from Richmond who says these changes will only add to existing struggles.
"We've already seen, even before the cuts fully take effect in January, we've already seen rural providers close their doors or eliminate certain provisions, like the hospital in Lynchburg that got rid of their labor and delivery department. We're seeing that more and more."
Lauryn Walker is the state deputy secretary of Health and Human Resources, and she says the governor is trying a number of strategies to mitigate the coming health-care crisis for hundreds of thousands of people.
"We've created a $150 million new state subsidy for individuals to be able to access coverage on the marketplace. We know that we are not going to be able to capture everybody who has insurance loss on that state marketplace, but we do believe that this state marketplace is going to be a huge way that we can continue to make coverage affordable in Virginia."
According to research from the Commonwealth Institute, cuts to Medicaid fall more heavily on Black families that rely on Medicaid in order to access affordable health care.
