Providers, advocates tell Assembly panel proposed federal Medicaid cuts would threaten New Jersey care and services

Chairwoman Murphy convened a listening hearing of the Assembly Health Committee in Trenton to gather testimony about possible federal cuts to Medicaid and Medicare and their likely effects on New Jersey residents and health providers. Witnesses from hospitals, home‑health agencies, disability providers, child welfare and workforce groups described widespread risks to access, programs and jobs if federal funding is reduced.

The committee was told that New Jersey now enrolls about 1,800,000 people in New Jersey Family Care and that hundreds of thousands could face coverage loss or strained services if federal matching funds or expansion funding change. Assembly Health Committee Chairwoman Murphy opened the session by calling it “a listening hearing for us, and our job today is to listen and to gather the facts that we need to know about how those cuts may or may not impact our families, our providers, our health care access.”

Why it matters: Testimony emphasized that Medicaid underpins a wide array of services beyond doctor visits — from nursing‑home stays and home‑and‑community supports to school‑based therapies and specialized pediatric care. Several witnesses supplied enrollment and fiscal estimates to show the scale of potential loss: 568,000 New Jersey residents were cited as enrolled through the ACA Medicaid expansion and officials warned that lowering the federal match for that population could cost the state “up to $8,000,000,000” to maintain current eligibility limits (testimony from…