---
type: source
title: "2026 Outlook: OBBBA Domino Effect and Hidden Costs for Healthcare Systems"
author: "Fierce Healthcare"
url: https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payers/2026-outlook-domino-effect-medicaid-cuts-and-hidden-costs-healthcare
date: 2026-01-01
domain: health
secondary_domains: []
format: industry analysis
status: processed
priority: medium
tags: [obbba, medicaid, uncompensated-care, health-systems, domino-effect, vbc, arpa-expiry]
---

## Content

Fierce Healthcare's 2026 industry outlook on the cascading effects of OBBBA Medicaid cuts:

**Key projections:**
- $204 billion increase in uncompensated care over 10 years
- Health systems will absorb costs from newly uninsured
- ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) home care funding expires end of 2026, creating compound timing crisis
- Home care workforce: 40% live in low-income households, 1/3 rely on Medicaid themselves

**The domino mechanism:**
1. Medicaid work requirements → coverage loss → newly uninsured seek care in ER
2. ER care → uncompensated → health system absorbs cost
3. Health system financial stress → less investment in VBC infrastructure
4. VBC transition slows → fee-for-service entrenched further

**DOGE's CMS actions (context):**
- DOGE gained access to CMS payment and contracting systems February 5, 2025
- CMS staff reductions underway (HHS sweeping cuts, March 2025)
- Staffing cuts at agencies that review Medicaid waiver applications create implementation delays for state programs trying to build CHW reimbursement infrastructure

**Rock Health investment signal:**
- Rock Health is "interested in companies that support enrollment, navigation or safety net capacity" — specifically Pear Suite (CHW care management platform)
- This suggests VCs see the OBBBA period as creating demand for navigation/enrollment support tools
- The disruption is creating a market for helping people navigate coverage fragmentation

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** The Fierce Healthcare outlook provides the INDUSTRY perspective on OBBBA — how health systems and health tech investors are actually thinking about 2026. The Rock Health investment signal in CHW navigation tools is particularly interesting: the OBBBA is creating a market for "helping people stay enrolled" which is a perverse response to a policy that's making enrollment harder. This is capitalism adapting to policy failure.

**What surprised me:** The ARPA expiry timing. Home care funding from ARPA expires end of 2026, the same year that work requirements kick in (December 2026). This creates a cliff where the populations most dependent on home care simultaneously lose Medicaid eligibility and see their home care workers' funding disappear. It's not just OBBBA — it's OBBBA plus ARPA expiry at the same time.

**What I expected but didn't find:** Any mitigation strategy from CMS or HHS for the compounding effects. The Fierce Healthcare piece suggests the industry is responding with navigation tools (Pear Suite), not policy countermeasures.

**KB connections:**
- Connects to [[the mental health supply gap is widening not closing because demand outpaces workforce growth and technology primarily serves the already-served rather than expanding access]] — similar pattern: demand for support grows, technology responds, but access for the most vulnerable is the gap
- The Rock Health investment in Pear Suite is interesting: if CHW navigation platforms scale, they could create a market-driven CHW adoption that doesn't depend on Medicaid CHW reimbursement (direct employer contracts, ACO contracts, etc.)

**Extraction hints:** The ARPA expiry + OBBBA compound timing is extractable as a separate claim about simultaneous infrastructure contraction. The Rock Health navigation tool investment could be mentioned as an "evidence of disruption creating market response."

## Curator Notes
PRIMARY CONNECTION: [[value-based care transitions stall at the payment boundary because 60 percent of payments touch value metrics but only 14 percent bear full risk]]
WHY ARCHIVED: Industry outlook showing how health systems and investors are actually responding to OBBBA — important ground-truth for whether the VBC attractor state thesis is being operationally abandoned or tactically adapted.
EXTRACTION HINT: The most extractable finding is the COMPOUND TIMING CRISIS: OBBBA work requirements (December 2026) + ARPA home care funding expiry (end 2026) hitting simultaneously. This is a discrete, dateable event that can be made into a specific claim.
