Today, House Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee will debate legislation that slashes billions of dollars from Medicaid and rips health care away from millions of Americans, so they can pass tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and corporations. Through job loss penalties, prohibitive reporting requirements, and other funding cuts, Republicans will take lifesaving care away from children, seniors, people fighting addiction or cancer, and so many more. At the same time, House Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee are taking away tax credits that lower premium costs for middle-class families and sabotaging the ACA, all of which will raise costs and make health care inaccessible and unaffordable for American families. This Republican budget is anything but moderate – Hospitals will close, sick people will go untreated, and working families will lose access to basic health care, all so Trump and Congressional Republicans can give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations.
The Washington Post: GOP’s scaled-back Medicaid plan still threatens coverage for millions
- Republicans’ plans to cut health care as part of President Donald Trump’s tax and immigration agenda could strip Medicaid coverage from 8.7 million people and lead to 7.6 million more uninsured people over 10 years, according to an estimate from Congress’s nonpartisan bookkeeper in documents obtained by The Washington Post…Because Republicans aren’t aiming to change federal contributions to Medicaid, which is funded jointly by states and the federal government, the savings would largely come from people dropping out of the program.
NPR: Experts warn Congress cuts to Medicaid and addiction funding will mean more overdose deaths
- This comes as drug policy experts, hospitals and recovery clinics are also bracing for possible cuts to Medicaid funding. Under the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid expanded rapidly and now provides much of the insurance coverage in the U.S. for people seeking medical treatment for addiction. “It’s a scary time. We’re terrified about the possibility of what might happen if Medicaid is diminished significantly,” said Dr. Stephen Taylor with the American Society of Addiction Medicine. “Our hope is to be able to convince policymakers and people who have control of things to not make changes we know would devastate the people we take care of.”
Politico: Hospital groups slam cuts to Medicaid in megabill
- Hospital groups argue that these changes will imperil health care facilities already struggling to keep their doors open, including those in low-income and rural areas that have a high number of Medicaid patients. “These hospitals, which already operate on thin margins, cannot absorb such losses without reducing services or closing their doors altogether,” said Bruce Siegel, president and CEO of America’s Essential Hospitals, which represents safety-net facilities.
The Washington Post: Nursing home and elder-care residents could be hit hard by potential Medicaid cuts
- Medicaid paid $255 billion for long-term care services in 2022, including $59 billion for stays in institutional facilities, a category that includes nursing homes, according to KFF, a health policy organization. More than 60 percent of nursing home stays nationwide are financed through Medicaid. “Their coverage will be at risk,” said Katie Sloan Smith, president and chief executive of LeadingAge, a Washington lobbying association for operators of nonprofit senior-care facilities. “Either the home itself will have to make up for that loss in some way or they will simply have to say, ‘We can no longer support people on Medicaid’ and close those beds.”
Bloomberg: Want to Keep Fighting Fentanyl? Don’t Cut Medicaid
- The committee draft likewise exempts people with “chronic” drug addiction from the new work mandates, but significant numbers of them could be ensnared anyway by the bill’s other new requirements on the expansion population. Those additional burdens will make it harder for people in drug treatment to get and keep the coverage they need, Orris says.
The Washington Post: Now might be exactly the worst time to cut Medicaid and food stamps
- This combination — top-heavy tax cuts financed by low-income benefit cuts — would add up to possibly the largest single transfer of wealth from poor to rich in U.S. history, according to back-of-the-envelope numbers from Bobby Kogan, a former Senate budget staffer and researcher at the Center for American Progress….This legislation, however, would add more bureaucratic roadblocks to enrollment in critical benefit programs (sound familiar?) while narrowing eligibility requirements. So we might be facing a perfect storm: an economy teetering on the edge of recession, but without the usual mechanisms kicking in to curb the pain and spur recovery. In fact, program enrollment might be falling just as people lose jobs, depending on when the cuts take effect. That means more pain in the near term — and a more protracted recession.
Newsweek: Millions Face Losing Health Insurance Under Republican Proposal
- The documents reveal that if enacted, the proposed subsidy rollback would strip coverage from millions, particularly hitting low-income adults who depend on enhanced premium tax credits to afford health plans under the ACA. The out-of-pocket costs for all privately insured Americans, including those with employment-based coverage, would increase by $450 for individuals and $900 for families as a result of the policy. The proposal could therefore have far-reaching implications for healthcare access and affordability, especially in states that did not expand Medicaid and where marketplace subsidies serve as a lifeline for lower-income residents.
Rolling Stone: Republican Medicaid Cuts Could Force Many Hospitals to ‘Close Their Doors’
- Conservatives appear ready to eliminate a key funding mechanism, called provider taxes, that have allowed states to provide supplemental payments to hospitals, doctors, and other providers in order to make up for lower reimbursements from Medicaid. According to an April report from The Wall Street Journal, delays in the processing of such payments by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have already forced hospitals in several states to lay off staff and pause payments to suppliers as the agency slow-walks supplemental funding approvals.
Fierce Healthcare: Report: Tax, Medicaid Cuts Largely Benefit High-Income Families
- House Republicans have unveiled their plans to cut federal spending and extend tax cuts, but experts warn that funding the cuts by slashing Medicaid and other entitlements will largely benefit families with higher incomes. The House Energy & Commerce Committee released its budget reconciliation proposal late Sunday, after being tasked with identifying at least $880 billion in spending cuts. A preliminary analysis from the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill would reduce the federal deficit by $912 billion, with $715 billion of that coming from cuts in healthcare.
Becker’s Hospital Review: ‘Cuts Of This Magnitude Cannot Be Absorbed’: Hospitals Slam Republicans’ Medicaid Proposal
- House Republicans on May 11 floated a bill that would impose up to $715 billion in Medicaid and ACA cuts over the next decade — reductions that hospital leaders warn would leave millions without coverage and put essential hospitals at risk of closure. The 160-page bill outlines several Medicaid provisions aimed at curbing federal spending, including: Implementing stricter eligibility requirements.
CBS News: Medicaid recipients could face work requirements under GOP bill. Here are the details
- Some policy experts who study Medicaid, food stamps and other social safety net programs say that there’s little evidence that work requirements increase employment, partly because most people who receive such aid and who are able to work are already doing so. About 92% of people under 65 years old who aren’t receiving disability benefits were working full- or part-time in 2023, or else unable to work because of duties such as attending school or caregiving obligations, according to a recent analysis from heath publication KFF. The remaining 8% were either retired, couldn’t find work or weren’t working for another reasons.
Axios: Why work requirements for Medicaid “don’t work”
- Typically the idea behind work requirements is to make sure people aren’t free-riding off of cash benefits — choosing not to work, and living off food stamps or welfare checks. The thing is: You can’t live off health insurance — it doesn’t pay the bills or provide food. There’s little evidence that people are somehow free-riding on Medicaid. 64% of adults with Medicaid work full time or part time, according to an analysis of census data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Another 32% are taking care of home or family, are ill or disabled, attend school, or are retired. 2% could not find work. And there’s another 2% in an “other” category.
MSNBC: The GOP’s plan could throw millions off Medicaid — and that’s just the start
- Republicans frame these mandates as a way to encourage people to work. But work requirements fail to increase employment, while only succeeding at tossing millions of people off Medicaid. And that’s exactly what Republicans in Congress are banking on. Work requirements — or paperwork requirements, more accurately — are little more than a bureaucratic cudgel. They impose layers of complex red tape on Medicaid enrollees, forcing them to clear administrative hurdles and prove their employment status or that they qualify for an exemption (such as caregiving or attending school). The primary result is health care coverage being taken away from eligible Americans.