By skyforbes 
I was writing an email to a colleague examining recent events when it occurred to me that I should look up the percentage that my state receives in federal funding from Medicaid. I am grateful to see that NY is the 4th leading state in terms of self-sufficiency from federal funding. This means that NY prioritizes taking care of its poor, and does far more than average to ensure that healthcare is available to the disadvantaged. While as a social worker, I struggle sometimes to see the bigger picture since I’m helping the neediest of the needy… it’s nice to see that NY is doing better than most in terms of caring for its impoverished.
However, a striking detail made itself clear to me as I looked at the data. The worst states in terms of Medicaid funding are the following: Kentucky, Arkansas, New Mexico, Oregon, West Virginia, and Nevada. These states’ Medicaid programs rely on at least 75% federal dollars just to stay afloat, according to the Kaiser Foundation. In short, these states are the most vulnerable to federal spending cuts that may (and probably will) target Medicaid.
As it happens, a few of these states (NM and AZ in particular) are host to enormous populations of Native American persons.
I noticed the correlation and did a quick comparison table to cross-check 2010 Census data (accessed via Wikipedia) with the Medicaid data. Take a look if you like at my work, here.
The information I found was startling (at least to me) in terms of its strength. To establish a statistical pattern, I plugged the data into GNU PSPP (a freeware alternative to the hyper-expensive PASW-SPSS software that I trained on in college as a young sociology major).
My findings demonstrate quite a strong correlation, as follows.
The higher the native population in a particular state, the greater percentage of Medicaid funding comes from the federal government. Which means that the states with the highest native populations will be most vulnerable to loss of federal Medicaid dollars.
Now I’m not a real math guru by any means, so feel free to check my work and explore other connections within this data.
However, my actionable advice is the following: if you live in a state with a large population of native people, one of the best things you can do to protect the state-wide social safety net is to advocate for diversified Medicaid funding — aside from, you know, preventing Medicaid spending cuts on a federal level.
Granted, I’m a direct services provider, not a policy person, so maybe my conclusions here are wrong somehow or other. I’m willing to be proven wrong. I just noticed this trend, proved it is statistically significant *enough* to address, and am trying to help figure out what to do about it.