Senate Finance Committee Republicans plan to amend the Home-passed “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” to make much more draconian cuts to Medicaid—a transfer that will nearly actually trigger thousands and thousands extra to lose their medical insurance.
Based on Politico’s report, the committee desires to decrease the Medicaid supplier tax—which states use to extract extra federal funding to pay for Medicaid recipients’ care—from 6% to three.5%. That would depart states having to both discover thousands and thousands of {dollars} to cowl prices or make cuts to this system that gives life-saving insurance coverage to greater than 71 million People yearly.
Already, the nonpartisan Congressional Funds Workplace stated the Home-passed invoice would trigger 16 million folks to lose their medical insurance inside the subsequent decade—each from Medicaid cuts and the GOP’s refusal to increase subsidies for folks to buy plans by way of the Reasonably priced Care Act. The cuts may devastate rural hospitals, lots of that are in pink states, hurting President Donald Trump’s personal supporters most.
A cartoon by Clay Bennett.
And that’s simply what would occur with the Home-passed invoice, which might block states from with the ability to elevate the levy over the 6% mark. However the Senate invoice would lower the Medicaid supplier tax practically in half.
Actually, a CBO report discovered that, had Home Republicans included the identical provision of their invoice, it might have brought on an extra 8.6 million folks to lose their Medicaid protection by 2034.
Whereas making this lower would devastate low-income People who depend on Medicaid, it might present Republicans with more cash to offset the price of their tax cuts for the wealthy. Reducing Medicaid much more would nearly actually be a political catastrophe for Republicans.
A Quinnipiac ballot launched final week discovered that 53% of People oppose the Home-passed model of the invoice, whereas simply 27% help it. It additionally discovered that solely 10% of People assume that Medicaid funding must be decreased—which is precisely what the Senate proposal would do.
Different polling exhibits related disapproval, with voters believing that this laws would assist wealthy folks whereas hurting the poor.
And voters’ anger over the cuts is already effervescent to the floor, with voters exhibiting up at Republican-led city halls to criticize their help for the invoice.
In fact, with a purpose to make this variation, the Senate must move the invoice, and the Home must take the invoice again up once more to approve the brand new cuts. And there are a selection of GOP lawmakers on report claiming that they might not help extra cuts to Medicaid, together with Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and a gaggle of Home Republicans in aggressive districts.
Although, provided that Republicans at all times cave to Trump’s calls for, there’s little question that they’d fold and settle for newly proposed Medicaid cuts.
However it doesn’t matter what occurs, by even releasing this plan, it proves that Republicans don’t have any qualms with harming hardworking People with a purpose to give tax cuts to the wealthy.
To that, I say: good luck with that message within the 2026 midterms.
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