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Medicaid cuts: How many millions could your Monmouth or Ocean County hospital lose?
Michael L. Diamond, Asbury Park Press – March 3, 2025
LONG BRANCH — The Jersey Shore’s health care providers could see millions of dollars in cuts — and thousands of its residents could lose insurance coverage — under a plan by Republican lawmakers to scale back Medicaid, U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone and advocates argued Friday.
The proposed cuts of at least $880 billion nationwide over the next decade would ripple through the Shore’s hospitals, nursing homes and home health programs — just as the giant baby boomer population continues to retire and is expected to need more care, they said.
“This is simply unacceptable,” Pallone said. “We can’t have this level of cuts.”
Pallone, speaking Friday at a press conference at the Long Branch Senior Center, is the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid.
The U.S. House of Representatives last week narrowly passed a budget resolution that called for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over the next 10 years and directed Pallone’s committee to make billions of cuts to partially offset them.
President Donald Trump has ruled out cuts to Social Security and Medicare, leaving policymakers few places to turn for savings other than Medicaid.
It shines a spotlight on a program that in New Jersey is known as NJ Family Care, which provides health insurance for 1.8 million New Jerseyans, or 18% of the population. They include: low- and moderate-income adults and children; people with disabilities; and seniors in long-term care facilities.
Ocean County has the state’s second-highest Medicaid population, with 168,437 adults and children covered by the program. Monmouth County has 83,117 Medicaid recipients, according to state data.
Dr. Kate Aberger, medical director for Visiting Physician Services at VNA Health Group, said Medicaid has been invaluable. The program covers more than half of New Jerseyans who are in long-term care facilities. And it pays for medicine, equipment and home health care aides for the aging population.
“Medicaid makes it possible to deliver this high-quality health care to patients in their homes, helping them manage their chronic conditions, avoid hospitalization and maintain their independence,” Aberger said. “Without this funding, many would have no choice but to enter a nursing home or go without care altogether.”
Signed into law 60 years ago by President Lyndon B. Johnson, Medicaid is funded by both the federal and state governments. The program in New Jersey has a $24 billion budget this fiscal year, with $14 billion coming from the federal government and $10 billion coming from the state’s $56.6 billion budget.
Republican lawmakers have said they can reach the savings they need by stamping out waste, fraud and abuse and adding a requirement that recipients work. In 2023, Medicaid fraud units secured more than 1,100 convictions and recovered $1.2 billion, according to a Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General report issued last March, USA TODAY reported.
U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, a Republican whose district includes parts of Monmouth and Ocean counties, voted for the House budget resolution, which essentially set out a blueprint for the mix of tax and spending cuts, but leaving it to committees to hash out the details. He didn’t respond to requests for an interview.
Smith bucked his party in 2017 when he voted against its bid to repeal the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. He cited the $880 billion in proposed cuts to Medicaid that would hurt people with disabilities — a group he has been known to support during his career.
Democrats and health care advocates, however, said the GOP’s new plan calls for extending tax cuts that largely benefit the wealthy and partially offsetting them with cuts to a health care program that benefits lower-income Americans. Among the options: reduce federal matching grants, and restrict eligibility.
Health providers worry that the state couldn’t make up for losses in federal funding, leaving hospitals, for example, facing steep cuts. The New Jersey Department of Health and Human Services said Monmouth and Ocean County hospitals could lose a total of $104.7 million to $332.3 million, depending on the scenario.
(Scroll down to see the potential impact on each hospital).
It isn’t clear what percentage of overall revenue is at risk. But the New Jersey Hospital Association, a trade group, said one in four patients in the state are covered by Medicaid.
“The proposed Medicaid cuts would have a catastrophic impact not only on New Jersey families, but for the hospitals and long term care residences that we all count on,” Cathy Bennett, president and chief executive officer of the New Jersey Hospital Association, said in a statement.
Potential Medicaid cuts to Monmouth and Ocean county hospitals
- Bayshore Community Hospital, Holmdel: $5.2 million to $16.4 million
- CentraState Medical Center, Freehold Township: $6.7 million to $21.3 million
- Community Medical Center, Toms River: $13.8 million to $43.7 million
- Jersey Shore University Medical Center, Neptune: $27.6 million to $87.5 million
- Monmouth Medical Center, Long Branch: $22.3 million to $70.9 million
- Monmouth Medical Center Southern Campus, Lakewood: $8.3 million to $26.5 million
- Ocean University Medical Center, Brick: $9.2 million to $29.3 million
- Riverview Medical Center, Red Bank: $5.6 million to $17.7 million
- Southern Ocean County Medical Center, Stafford: $6 million to $19 million
Source: New Jersey Department of Health and Human Services
Staff writer Scott Fallon contributed to this story.
Michael L. Diamond is a business reporter at the Asbury Park Press. He has been writing about the New Jersey economy and health care industry since 1999.