While experts across the country are raising the alarm about the devastation of Medicaid cuts, Republicans are charging forward with their plan to slash $880 billion from the program in order to pay for tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, such a drastic reduction in funding will lead to the largest cuts in Medicaid history and rip health care away from millions of seniors in nursing homes, children, veterans, working families, and more. Every single community across the country will feel the effects of these cuts. In addition, poll after poll after poll has found Republican lawmakers are completely out of step with the American people when it comes to Medicaid. A majority of voters, including GOP voters, oppose cuts to Medicaid and are counting on Republicans to do the right thing – reject cuts to Medicaid.
During this Medicaid Awareness Month, Protect Our Care is continuing its “Hands Off Medicaid” campaign with theme weeks to underscore the importance of Medicaid across the country. Alongside partners, lawmakers, and other advocates, Protect Our Care is working to defend Medicaid from the Republican-led plan to slash funding to pay for another round of tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations.
The New Republic: GOP Rep. Lays Out Exactly How Party Will Kick People Off Medicaid.
- “The GOP wants to drastically decrease the federal match rate for the ACA expansion and shift more financial responsibility to states, Republican Representative Austin Scott told Fox Business Tuesday. The cut would be devastating to the 20 million Americans who currently rely on the expansion for health insurance coverage—many of whom reside in red states—and would leave some 40 states that have adopted the ACA expansion to fend for themselves with their limited budgets. According to an analysis from the health nonprofit KFF, if states had to pay a higher match-rate percentage, many would likely abandon the ACA program altogether, resulting in millions of lost coverage for low-income Americans.”
CNN: Republicans Are Targeting a Pillar of Obamacare. Millions of Their Own Voters May Pay a Price.
- “As the pressure grows on congressional Republicans to identify cuts in Medicaid, they are crashing into a familiar problem: The changes that could save the most money would impose heavy costs on many of their own voters.”
- “But GOP constituencies would hardly be immune if Congress rescinds the expansion. Nearly three dozen House Republicans also represent districts where the number of people receiving coverage through that Medicaid expansion exceeds the national district average of about 61,600, the analysis found. And nearly two dozen GOP senators likewise represent states with a substantial population of enrollees covered through the ACA’s Medicaid expansion.”
Forbes: Medicaid Is On The Menu As Republicans Seek Trump Budget Deal.
- “Two months ago, the House of Representatives adopted a budget resolution that calls for $2 trillion in cuts to mandatory spending over the next decade, including $880 billion from the part of the budget that funds Medicaid and Medicare. If Congress slashes Medicaid, lower-income Americans will lose far more than they gain from their modest tax breaks.”
The Hill: Medicaid Cuts Risk Worsening Black Maternal Health Crisis.
- “Medicaid’s coverage of prenatal care is vital to closing the gaps in the maternal mortality crisis, said Stacey Brayboy, senior vice president of public policy and government affairs at March of Dimes. Medicaid’s prenatal care can help cover not only screenings like Ewell needed each week, but can also help track pregnant people’s cardiovascular health, risks for preeclampsia, high blood pressure and glucose levels — all chronic stressors that can cause preterm births.”
The Hill: Cutting Federal Medicaid Expansion Funding Could Lead to 30K Additional Deaths: Analysis.
- “[A]nalysis by the Centers for American Progress (CAP), shared first with The Hill, found that about 34,200 more people would die annually if the federal government reduced its current 90 percent match for the expansion costs and states responded by dropping their Medicaid expansion… ‘The federal government is paying 90 percent of the Medicaid expansion. What we have talked about is moving that 90 percent level of the expansion back toward the more traditional level,’ Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) said in an interview Monday… Eliminating the enhanced federal match for the Medicaid expansion population would dramatically reduce federal spending, but it would also shift those costs to the states, forcing governors to make difficult decisions.”
Newsweek: Republican Explains Potential Changes to Medicaid.
- “Republicans are considering lowering the FMAP, which would shift more the funding to the states, Scott told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo on Monday… Dr. Michelle Au, an anesthesiologist and Democratic Georgia state Representative, [said] on X: ‘The 9 to 1 federal match applies to states that fully expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Congressional Republicans know states can’t cover the same number of patients if this federal match is cut. It also allows them to blame governors for the cuts Congress makes.’”
Politicus USA: Republicans Plan To Gut Medicaid Funding Then Blame The States When People Lose Healthcare.
- “Republicans think that the American people are stupid. This is not a statement that is made lightly or in jest, but it is the only possible explanation for the scheme that they have come up with to avoid blame for gutting Medicaid… The scam is simple. Republicans are going to slash the federal funding and then force governors to throw people off Medicaid, because their states can’t afford to come up with another 40% in Medicaid funds.”
Semafor: Choppy Waters for Gop’s Medicaid Cuts.
- “When Republicans get into the details of cutting Medicaid spending to pay for tax cuts, things get pretty perilous. Consider Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., who on Monday floated shrinking the federal government’s 90% share of Medicaid expansion for states that opted to expand the program under the Affordable Care Act (Georgia is one of 10 states that have not expanded the program). He said on Fox Business that ‘we are going to ask the states to pick up and pay some additional percentage.’ By Tuesday evening, congressional Democrats were hammering the plan, while Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., distanced himself from the idea.”
Axios: Hospitals Warn of “Devastating” D.C. Medicaid Cut.
- “A House Republican proposal to cut the District of Columbia’s federal Medicaid reimbursement to generate savings for reconciliation is sending shudders through the city’s hospitals… [T]he D.C. Hospital Association is warning it would have “devastating” effects, including longer wait times and even the possible closure of a hospital… The proposal under consideration would cut D.C.’s federal Medicaid reimbursement, or FMAP, from 70% to 50%.”
The State Journal-Register: ‘It Just Seems So Unfair:’ Illinois Families Brace for Possible Medicaid Cuts.
- “But attending a day program can be ‘prohibitively’ expensive without Medicaid, Nicoletta added. ‘We just don’t know what’s going to happen, and it just seems so unfair that there are legislators and government officials that are making decisions about these things when they haven’t thought it all through, I don’t think.’”
The Daily News-Miner: Opinion: Senator’s Medicaid Math Doesn’t Add Up for Alaska.
- “Sullivan castigated Democrats for opposing his amendment to protect Medicaid for the “most vulnerable,” claiming they were hypocrites who don’t want to protect Medicaid. But when an amendment to delete budget instructions that would slash Medicaid came up for a vote, Sullivan opposed that attempt to protect the program.”
WyoFile: Opinion: Gutting Medicaid to Give Tax Breaks to the Wealthy Isn’t a Smart Choice, Especially for Wyoming.
- “Republicans have targeted Medicaid funding for decades and it appears the party’s leaders, axes anxiously in hand, finally have it on the chopping block. But the GOP doesn’t have to make huge cuts to a program that provides health insurance to 79 million low-income Americans.”
- “What happens when Americans realize that an $880 billion cut to Medicaid means their aging family members won’t be eligible for nursing home care? The Economic Policy Institute says cutting Medicaid to pay for low taxes on the rich is a terrible trade. The institute notes Medicaid cuts that deprive children of access to health coverage could actually increase the federal budget in the long term because these children will not only be less healthy, they’ll grow up to earn less in wages, pay less in taxes and be more likely to receive other public benefits.”