A national nonprofit group is claiming Iowa could lose more than 13,000 jobs as a result of proposed Medicaid cuts in the House Republican budget. Families USA executive director Ron Pollack says his organization’s economic impact study also shows as much as $1.3 billion in state business activity would be placed at risk.

“Cutting Medicaid funds not only hurts seniors, people with disabilities and children – who count on Medicaid as their lifeline, but it also results in fewer jobs and stunts the economic recovery,” Pollack said. The budget proposal passed by the U.S. House calls for cutting federal funding to state

Medicaid programs by five-percent in the first year. Pollack says, in Iowa, that amounts to roughly $111 million. “That would result in more than 2,000 jobs being at risk,” Pollack said. The plan would eventually cut funding to state Medicaid program by 33-percent in 2021.

The Families USA report claims that would put as many as 13,280 jobs “at risk” in Iowa. In addition, Pollack says those job cuts would have a “multiplier effect” on business activity in the state. “Those folks would have less of an ability to purchase consumer goods, whether it’s an television set, a dishwasher or an automobile. In turn, folks who own businesses that sell those goods would have less of an ability to purchase other consumer goods,” Pollack said.

(Pat Curtis/Radio Iowa)