Congress and the newly appointed HHS Medicaid Commission are considering changes to reduce federal Medicaid expenditures. Recent recommendations from the National Governors Association would eliminate most federal standards with regard to the amounts that low-income Medicaid beneficiaries may be charged for health care coverage and services and significantly scale back federal standards governing the health benefits that Medicaid provides. Two research papers published in the July/August issue of the journal Health Affairs shed important new light on the potential effects of such policy changes.