Senate Finance Committee Republicans plan to amend the Home-passed “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” to make even extra draconian cuts to Medicaid—a transfer that might virtually definitely trigger thousands and thousands extra to lose their medical health insurance.
In response to Politico’s report, the committee needs 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 supplies life-saving insurance coverage to greater than 71 million People yearly.
Already, the nonpartisan Congressional Price range Workplace stated the Home-passed invoice would trigger 16 million folks to lose their medical health insurance inside the subsequent decade—each from Medicaid cuts and the GOP’s refusal to develop subsidies for folks to buy plans by the Reasonably priced Care Act. The cuts might devastate rural hospitals, a lot of that are in crimson states, hurting President Donald Trump’s personal supporters most.
And that’s simply what would occur with the Home-passed invoice, which might block states from with the ability to increase the levy over the 6% mark. However the Senate invoice would reduce the Medicaid supplier tax almost in half.
Actually, a CBO report discovered that, had Home Republicans included the identical provision of their invoice, it could have brought about a further 8.6 million folks to lose their Medicaid protection by 2034.
Whereas making this reduce would devastate low-income People who depend on Medicaid, it could present Republicans with more cash to offset the price of their tax cuts for the wealthy. Slicing Medicaid much more would virtually definitely 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 ought to be decreased—which is strictly what the Senate proposal would do.
Different polling reveals comparable 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, as a way to make this transformation, the Senate must cross 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 file claiming that they might not help extra cuts to Medicaid, together with Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and a group of Home Republicans in aggressive districts.
Although, on condition 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 haven’t any qualms with harming hardworking People as a way to give tax cuts to the wealthy.
To that, I say: good luck with that message within the 2026 midterms.
