America's 'Shame': Medicaid Funding Slashed In U.S. Territories
Right now, there are dozens of patients — U.S. citizens — in New Zealand hospitals who are fighting the clock. They have only a few weeks to recover and get home to the tiny island of American Samoa, a U.S. territory in the South Pacific.
"We have a cancer patient that is coming back in December," says Sandra King Young, who runs the Medicaid program in American Samoa. "We can only give him six weeks of chemo, radiation and surgery. He has a good chance of survival if he has the full year of treatment, but not six weeks. The patient and family understand, and since they have no money, they have agreed to come back."
The federal money to fully fund the Medicaid program in American Samoa and in all other U.S. territories is about to run out. As a consequence, the off-island referral program to treat conditions that the territory doesn't have the local capacity or facilities to treat — the program that brought these patients to New Zealand — is getting shut down.
"It's devastating for those people who need those lifesaving services," King Young says. "People who need cancer treatment won't get it. Children with rheumatic heart disease won't get the heart surgeries that they need."
Read more: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/11/20/780452645/americas-shame-medicaid-funding-slashed-in-u-s-territories
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