Medicare, Medicaid not impacted by Trump funding freeze, Politico reports

Early Tuesday, the White House budget office circulated a 52-page document as it seeks to implement a sweeping freeze of federal assistance, ordering agencies to answer 14 questions by the end of next week for each program that “has funding or activities planned through March 15,” noted Politico’s Jennifer Scholtes. Hours later, the Office of Management and Budget released a follow-up memo, also obtained by Politico, explaining that benefits like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and student loans would not be affected by the freeze, nor would Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security payments. “Funds for small business, farmers, Pell grants, Head Start, rental assistance, and other similar programs will not be paused,” Politico quotes the new memo as having stated. Molina Healthcare (MOH), Elevance Health (ELV) and Centene (CNC) are all levered to Medicaid coverage and were lower in Tuesday afternoon trading in apparent reaction to the funding freeze news. Other publicly traded companies in the healthcare insurance space that may be impacted by changes to Medicaid policy include CVS Health (CVS), Cigna (CI), Humana (HUM) and UnitedHealth (UNH).