Washington State Removes Cuts to School-Based Medicaid and Outpatient Coverage of Adult Speech Therapy Services

March 12, 2026

On February 22, 2026, the Washington State House released a supplemental operating budget that proposed to eliminate speech therapy (ST), occupational therapy (OT), and physical therapy (PT) for all adult Apple Health/Medicaid enrollees. The proposed budget also made cuts to school-based Medicaid services by reducing the state match of funds.

If the proposed budget had passed, 1.9 million Medicaid-enrolled children and adults in Washington would have lost robust access to speech-language pathology services.

ASHA partnered with the Washington Speech-Language-Hearing Association (WSHA) and quickly mobilized ASHA advocates to push back against these cuts-and succeeded.

Working with WSHA leadership and their state lobbyist, ASHA sent an email on February 26 to the more than 4,000 ASHA members based in Washington asking them to contact their legislators and urge them to remove cuts to ST/OT/PT and school-based Medicaid in the final operating budget. Advocates sent 786 letters to those legislators, and they heard the message loud and clear.

Advocacy win! After extensive advocacy, Washington released the final budget bill on March 11 and excluded the originally proposed cuts (more on the Washington Medicaid agency's budget). WSHA and ASHA are grateful for this outcome. Thank you to the hundreds of Washingtonians who joined us in advocacy!

ASHA is engaging in similar advocacy in states affected by cuts as a result of state-level implementation of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including neighboring Idaho, and is tracking legislation and state budgets across the country. If you discover potential Medicaid cuts that could impact audiologists and speech-language pathologists in your state, please contact [email protected].