Medicaid

After House Republicans voted to pass their devastating tax bill, reporting from policy experts and sources across the country reveal how devastating this GOP tax scam will be for the health care and financial stability of everyday Americans. This bill includes the largest Medicaid cuts in history and all but repeals the ACA through massive funding cuts, new rules and restrictions, and the elimination of premium tax credits, all of which will increase costs and rip coverage and care away from middle- and low-income families. With this bill, Republicans will make the wealthiest Americans and corporations even richer by ripping lifesaving care away from children with disabilities and cancer patients, shuttering hospitals and nursing homes, and forcing working families to choose between seeing a doctor or putting food on the table. As this bill moves to the Senate, Republicans will have to decide where they stand: with billionaires and big corporations or everyday Americans.

NATIONAL

The New York Times: Editorial Board: Make No Mistake, Republicans Are Trying to Cut Medicaid.

• “All Americans deserve access to affordable health care. Every other developed nation already ensures universal access, and the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare, while flawed and inefficient, has brought the United States closer to that goal. Republicans are not proposing to fix the flaws. They are not proposing to deliver better health care at a lower cost. The bill would save money by depriving Americans of health insurance.”

The Bulwark: GOP ‘Moderates’ Lied Their Way Through Cutting Medicaid.

• “The bill’s fortunes improved through the night as one so-called moderate House Republican after another reneged on promises to preserve the social safety net. Many of their constituents will be feeling the pain of the coming policy changes in the years ahead.”

Vox: The Reconciliation Bill Is Republicans Doing What They Do Best

• “So, all in all, a terrible bill. But whatever else that proposal is, it’s startlingly normal for Republican politics. It represents ideas that have defined the Republican party and its economic and budgetary priorities since 1980, and which the party has strongly held to even in the face of Trump’s total takeover. The Republican Party stands for lower taxes, especially on the rich; lower spending on programs for the poor; and big spending on defense.”

The Atlantic: The Largest Upward Transfer of Wealth in American History 

• “House Republicans are fully aware of the political and economic risks of this endeavor. Cutting taxes for the affluent is unpopular, and cutting Medicaid is even more so. That is why, instead of proudly proclaiming what the bill will accomplish, they are pretending it will do neither.”
• “The party’s response is to fall back on wordplay, pretending that their scheme of imposing complex work requirements, which are designed to cull eligible recipients who cannot navigate the paperwork burden, will not throw people off the program—when that is precisely the effect they are counting on to produce the necessary savings.”

Bloomberg: Opinion: A Big, Ugly Attack on Americans’ Health

• “The changes would affect not just those in the above-mentioned groups but also pregnant women and children — and even Americans who don’t rely on Medicaid. Ultimately, as new data make clear, this attack on a vital service for low-income Americans will cost lives.”

MSNBC: Opinion: Republicans Pass Trump Bill While Trying to Hide Medicaid, Snap Cuts 

• “Indeed, what is happening on Capitol Hill can hardly be described as legislating. Making laws means hearing from experts, considering data and weighing pros and cons. The GOP’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ is none of those things. It’s highway robbery, and Republicans desperately don’t want the American people to know that they are the ones holding them up.”

CNBC: House Republican Tax Bill Favors the Rich — How Much They Stand to Gain, and Why 

• “The bulk of the financial benefits in the legislation — called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” — would flow to the wealthiest Americans, courtesy of tax-cutting measures like those for business owners, investors and homeowners in high-tax areas, experts said. However, low earners would be worse off, they said. That’s largely because Republicans partially offset those tax cuts — estimated to cost about $4 trillion or more — with reductions to social safety net programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.”

Rolling Stone: Trump’s Tax Bill Would Decimate the Affordable Care Act 

• “In a letter to House leadership, 18 state-level ACA marketplaces warned of the potential devastation. “The Americans who depend on the marketplaces include working parents, small business owners, farmers, gig workers, early retirees, and lower and middle-class individuals of all ages, political views, and backgrounds who drive our local economies and make both our rural and urban communities thrive,” they wrote. “These proposals, in total, will drastically diminish the progress on health coverage that the United States has made in the last decade via marketplaces. Only the sickest patients may remain in the marketplaces, skyrocketing costs for everyone.””

Bloomberg: Trump Tax Bill Holdouts Lured With SALT Hike, Medicaid Cuts 

• “The revised bill also would accelerate new Medicaid work requirements to December 2026 from 2029 in a gesture to satisfy ultraconservatives.”
• “In an appeal to hardliners, the revised bill prohibits Medicaid from funding gender transition therapies or procedures for minors or adults. The original version applied only to minors.”

Medicare Rights Center: Broken Promises: Republicans’ Budget Reconciliation Bill Would Cut Medicare 

• Since taking control of Congress and the White House, Republican leadership and rank-and-file members have repeatedly promised not to undermine Medicare or cut Medicare benefits. With the introduction and House passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA), they have broken that promise. The Republican tax bill takes direct aim at Medicare, gutting eligibility and restricting access to benefits, while also cutting Medicaid in ways that would harm people who are dually eligible for both programs. For low-income older adults and people with disabilities, the health and economic ramifications of these cuts would be devastating.

MarketWatch: ‘Medicaid and Food Stamps Are Easy Targets’: House Bill Makes Unprecedented Cuts to Medicaid and Snap 

• “Medicaid and food stamps are easy targets because the poor don’t have lobbyists,” said Chris Orestis, president and founder of Retirement Genius, a retirement education and consulting firm. “Seniors and vulnerable people have never seen these levels of cuts. This is unprecedented. The bill still adds $5 trillion to the deficit while gutting social services. It’s a clear statement of the legislative priorities of the House and the administration.”  

FROM THE EXPERTS

CBPP: House Republican Health Agenda Cuts Coverage, Raises People’s Costs 

• The amount of health care cuts and the number of people losing coverage and becoming uninsured are expected to grow as House Republicans make changes in preparation of bringing the bill to the House floor. Along with the cuts that will result in coverage losses, the bill would raise costs for millions of others who manage to keep their health coverage, and it cruelly targets specific people with harsh restrictions and reduced access to care, including people who are immigrants with a lawful status and their families.
• Despite misleading claims otherwise, nearly all of those losing Medicaid and marketplace coverage and those facing higher costs are eligible for these programs and are U.S. citizens or have a lawful immigration status. And those harmed by this plan do include children, older adults, and people with disabilities.

Center for American Progress: The Big, ‘Beautiful’ Bill’s Health Care Cuts Would Drive Up Uncompensated Care and Threaten Vulnerable Hospitals 

• The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that this bill, alongside congressional Republicans’ refusal to extend enhanced ACA premium tax credits, would cause nearly 14 million Americans to lose health insurance. Notably, the House-approved bill includes last-minute changes that would both deepen and accelerate coverage losses, including by implementing Medicaid work reporting requirements starting in 2026 and more frequent eligibility determinations two years earlier than initial drafts proposed. This surge in uninsurance would not only destabilize people’s lives but also place immense pressure on health care providers throughout the entire country, as they would be left to absorb staggering financial losses from unreimbursed care services.

IN THE STATES

Alaska Public Media: Alaskans protest Begich’s support for Medicaid cuts in national budget reconciliation bill

• “Alaska is one of the most dependent states on federal Medicaid funding. On average the state pays only about a quarter of Medicaid costs and the rest is covered by the Federal government. The state already has some of the highest health care costs in the world and experts say that major Medicaid cuts at a federal level would likely lead to even higher Alaska health care costs.”

KFVS: Thousands of Missourians could lose Medicaid coverage under proposed changes

• “In Missouri alone, 1.3 million people use Medicaid. KC CARE Health Center serves about 20,000 people in and around Kansas City, Missouri–most of them on Medicaid. Wil Franklin says many of his patients at KC CARE Health Center work multiple jobs just to get by. Without Medicaid, however, those patients would not be able to see Franklin or the other caregivers at KC CARE.”

Wisconsin Examiner: Two parents put a face on the impact of potential Medicaid cuts

• Her son has been able to thrive living with her and her husband, Seawright said — but worry clouds the future. “We look toward his adulthood, knowing that disability and aging programs that would support him staying in the community — where we, our family and our community, know he belongs — are being dismantled and defunded,” Seawright said. “Forcing us and others like us into medical bankruptcy is not a solution.”…“Our neighbors, our friends and our colleagues at work who rely on Medicaid and are scared, really scared,” Baldwin said. 

WTKR: Protesters gather outside Kiggans’ Town Center office to voice concerns about Trump’s spending bill

• The group says they’re worried about how Trump’s bill could impact Medicaid. The proposed legislation includes significant alterations to Medicaid, seeking to impose work and education requirements for beneficiaries, per Scripps News reports. Pittman claims, “Over 600,000 Virginians getting kicked off of Medicaid. Medicaid is a federal-state partnership. Virginia voted to expand Medicaid, and if the federal government gets rid of that funding, then 600,000 Virginians are set to lose it.”

Tucson Sentinel: Healthcare advocates warn Medicaid cuts will strip coverage from 190k 

• As Republicans debate new work requirements and other Medicaid changes as part of a budget plan making its way through the U.S. House of Representatives, healthcare advocates are warning that eligible Arizonans will lose their health insurance when they fail to jump new bureaucratic hurdles…Tucson resident Chad Durns, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2021, receives his insurance through AHCCCS. Durns fears that he’d lose his coverage as a result of work requirements.
• “It’s not about waste and fraud and abuse,” said Kelly, an Arizona Democrat serving his first full term in the Senate. “It’s about kicking people off and making it harder for them. It’s about cutting costs to get a big tax cut.” That tax cut, Kelly said, will overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans. “If you’re in the top .1 percent, you get something like $350,000 a year out of this,” Kelly said. “If you’re in the top 1 percent, somewhere between $60,000 and $100,000. If you’re median income, talking about maybe a couple hundred dollars and if you’re below that, you get nothing.”

Fresno Bee: A California spinal injury survivor speaks out on Medicaid funding cuts

• Without Medicaid, I don’t know how I’d survive, let alone attend college, pursue my degree or build a future. I live on a fixed income. There is simply no room in my budget for the medications, hospital bills or emergency care that Medicaid currently covers. Without it, I would be trapped — physically, financially and emotionally. Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security are not handouts. They are systems we contribute to — investments we make in one another so that when hardship strikes, we don’t fall through the cracks.