Republicans May Find It Harder to Cut Medicaid Than They Think
“Republicans may have just gotten an alarming glimpse of the future.
Amid the chaos of President Donald Trump’s now-rescinded domestic funding freeze, Medicaid portals across the country went offline, which meant states couldn’t get their Medicaid dollars. It was something the administration said was never supposed to happen and which provoked public outrage and a bipartisan outcry.
Now Republicans are considering whether and how to target Medicaid as part of their effort to defray the cost of massive tax cuts, the centerpiece of Trump’s legislative agenda. With full GOP control of Washington, the question at the start of the year seemed to be not whether Medicaid would be cut but by how much. Republicans passed around proposals just last month that would slash hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid and radically transform the program. Yet this week, Speaker Mike Johnson suggested the deepest cuts might not be in the offing. GOP lawmakers are still haggling over their budget blueprints amid a fierce debate between hard-liners and relative moderates over spending cuts.
As the blowback over the portals foreshadowed, going after Medicaid will be harder than it looks. That’s because the program has evolved and expanded significantly over the years — and its constituency has expanded along with it. Some 80 million people now get health care from Medicaid, including many working-class voters in the president’s base.”
Read more at Politico Magazine.