Dive Brief:

• Schools specializing in serving students with special needs are increasingly dismayed by the possibility that Medicaid funding could be cut in the event of a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, with teachers at St. Coletta Special Education Public Charter School in Washington, DC, for example, saying cuts could limit the services they offer students, The Washington Post reports.
• Though federal law mandates that schools provide special needs services as necessary, the funding needed to do so effectively has never materialized, and many schools depend on Medicaid reimbursement to supply them.
• The Office of the State Superintendent in DC says the school district received $40 million in Medicaid funding for special ed services in the previous fiscal year alone, and DC could lose $563 million in federal Medicaid funding overall in the first year and as much as $1 billion annually within a decade if the law is repealed. The funding cuts would reportedly leave schools competing for available dollars with medical facilities.

Dive Insight:

The concern in DC regarding the potential loss of Medicaid funding matches growing anxieties among school and district leaders nationwide of the potential impact on students if the ACA is nixed. Numerous superintendents and other leaders, including from Illinois and Ohio, have spoken out against potential cuts in the event of repeal.

In addition to special needs services, cuts could impact mental health services and the ability to hire school nurses. In Georgia, school officials were hoping to double the amount of school nurses with Medicaid reimbursement funding, but it remains to be seen how a potential Obamacare repeal could affect this proposal. In many districts, particularly in rural areas, school nurses are often the only medical practitioner students may see regularly.

Some schools, however, are experimenting with telemedicine approaches, where computer-connected otoscopes and stethoscopes can be used by doctors not in-facility to monitor students’ health. Such programs could eventually become more cost-effective, but it is still unclear if they would result in lower health benefits for students in schools that previously had a nurse on staff. While these technologies continue to develop and scale, school and district leaders may have to continue advocating for maintaining Medicaid funding if they feel essential programs are endangered.