The ongoing government shutdown has reignited the debate over healthcare and Medicaid spending.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration proposed rolling back billions of dollars in Medicaid funding as part of his One Big Beautiful Bill, potentially impacting millions of Americans. Federal policymakers were unable to reach an agreement on a spending bill.
Military veterans stand out as one of the groups most affected, with one in 10 veterans relying on Medicaid. New York State contains 15% of the country’s veteran population enrolled in Medicaid, 82,900 veterans, according to the New York Health Foundation (NYHealth), a healthcare advocacy organization. That’s the highest share of any state in the nation.
Derek Coy, senior program officer at NYHealth, said the proposed cuts could negatively affect the group.
“I think it’ll impact New York State [in] a few different ways,” Coy said. “One, we’ve seen when there were threats to repealing the Affordable Care Act, there would likely be an increased reliance on other forms of care such as VA [Veterans Affairs].”
Currently, 43% of New York veterans lie outside of the Veterans Affairs (VA) system due to eligibility requirements tied to discharge status, according to NYHealth.
In rural places, VA offices may offer limited services and lack certain specialties that older veteran populations need.
Coy said the ongoing federal fight has led to increased urgency for mental healthcare needs.
“It’s really going to set back a lot of those efforts despite a lot of great outvote doing work to prevent veteran suicide,” he said. “I think if we view it through that lens, we understand that you know these cuts very much are likely due to negatively impact[ing] the health of veterans, but unfortunately, we're afraid that this might lead to loss of life as well,” he said.
Roughly 100,000 veterans live on Long Island, according to the Rockefeller Institute of Government.
