LINCOLN- Spending for health care proposals will top the charts for spending in 2024 as Nebraska lawmakers finished the 2024 legislative session this week. Lawmakers set aside $755 million in state funds either from Nebraska’s main pocketbook or various cash funds and reserves. The state could receive about $1.5 billion in federal funds, most for health care programs.

This comes out to $2.2 billion in state and federal spending, over 95% of which is allocated toward health care programs, while raising $672 million in state funds. Proposals ranged from tapping into a larger federal pool of funds for Medicaid support for hospitals and partnering with an Iowa-based nonprofit for prescription drug donations to exempting National Guard income from state income taxation.

The largest proposal passed and already signed into law is State Sen. Mike Jacobson’s LB1087, the Hospital Quality Assurance and Access Assessment Act, which calls to create a fee on Nebraska hospitals based on their quarterly net patient revenue that would, in turn, unlock federal funds that most states already have access to. The second costliest was LB130 which increases a quality assurance assessment imposed on licensed nursing facilities.

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