Tag: Medicaid cuts

Trump officials take bold steps on Medicaid

The Trump administration is pulling out all the stops to encourage red states to make conservative changes to Medicaid without congressional input.

Administration officials are pushing ahead and granting approvals to states seeking to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients, even in the face of legal challenges and large-scale losses in the number of people covered.

Last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) granted Ohio’s request for work requirements, the ninth such approval since President Trump took office.

View the complete March 20 article by Nathaniel Weixel on The Hill website here.

Emily Singer Trump Budget Would Cut Food And Health Care For Millions

Trump’s budget for the next fiscal year was released on Monday, and it’s just as bad as you can imagine.

In it, Trump proposes gutting social safety-net programs, like food stamps, while at the same time working to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with the same health care bill Republicans failed to pass in 2017, which would kick 21 million Americans off the insurance rolls.

Trump’s budget also proposes further health care cuts, including nixing zero-premium plans on the ACA exchanges and demanding that all Americans “contribute something.” That could raise costs for millions of poorer Americans who currently pay $0 in health care subsidies in the ACA exchange.

View the complete March 11 article by Emily Singer with The American Independent on the National Memo website here.

Mitch McConnell Calls for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid Cuts After Passing Tax Cuts, Massive Defense Spending

After instituting a $1.5 trillion tax cut and signing off on a $675 billion budget for the Department of Defense, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that the only way to lower the record-high federal deficit would be to cut entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

“It’s disappointing, but it’s not a Republican problem,” McConnell said of the deficit, which grew 17 percent to $779 billion in fiscal year 2018. McConnell explained to Bloomberg that “it’s a bipartisan problem: Unwillingness to address the real drivers of the debt by doing anything to adjust those programs to the demographics of America in the future.” The deficit has increased 77 percent since McConnell became majority leader in 2015.

New Treasury Department analysis on Monday revealed that corporate tax cuts had a significant impact on the deficit this year. Federal revenue rose by 0.04 percent in 2018, a nearly 100 percent decrease on last year’s 1.5 percent. In fiscal year 2018, tax receipts on corporate income fell to $205 billion from $297 billion in 2017.

View the complete October 16 article by Nicole Goodkind on the Newsweek website here.

Medicaid rolls set to be slashed under Trump-approved work rules

Seema Verma, Head of the US Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Credit: Getty Images

The thousands of people who lost Medicaid coverage this month in Arkansas for not following newly implemented work requirements may be a sign of what’s to come in other GOP-led states.

Indiana and New Hampshire are slated to implement their Medicaid work requirements next year, and a slew of other states are awaiting approval from the Trump administration to do so.

Arkansas has served as a test case of sorts since it was the first state to implement work requirements, and this month it became the first state to kick off beneficiaries for not following them.

View the complete September 13 article by Jessie Hellmann on the Hill website here.

How Medicaid Cuts Could Threaten Public School Students and Teachers in Every State

The following article by Heidi Schultheis, Eliza Schultz and Rachel West was posted on the Center for American Progress website August 14, 2018:

Teachers rally at the state capitol in Oklahoma City to demand lawmakers increase funding for public schools, April 2018. Credit: J. Pat Carter/AFP via Getty

President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have repeatedly attempted to undermine the U.S. health care system, including with provisions in their unpopular tax bill that undercut the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate and drove up premium prices. Recent reports indicate that congressional Republicans will almost surely repeat their campaign to repeal the ACA and slash the Medicaid program. If they succeed, there could be dire consequences not only for Americans’ health but for state budgets as well. Federal Medicaid payments comprise an average of 17.7 percent of states’ total expenditures, which means that deep cuts to the federal government’s Medicaid payments would squeeze other essential services in the state budget such as education. Continue reading “How Medicaid Cuts Could Threaten Public School Students and Teachers in Every State”

GOP Cuts Would Devastate Social Programs That Already Struggle to Meet the Needs of Poor Americans, Nonprofit Service Providers Warn

Nonprofit providers can supplement the social safety net, but they can’t replace it.

The following article by Ebony Slaughter-Johnson was posted on the AlterNet website July 10, 2017:

Boston, MA-January 15, 2017. Protesters at “Our First Stand: Save Health Care Rally.”
Credit: Heidi Besen / Shutterstock.com

Just weeks after lambasting the Affordable Care Act repeal and replacement efforts as “terrible” and “mean,” President Trump is now calling for something even meaner: repealing the ACA entirely and replacing it at a later date.

Repealing the ACA without replacing it would leave 32 million more uninsured by 2026.

Though delayed, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, the Senate version of the repeal, survives. It empowers states to apply for waivers to opt out of offering essential health benefits, defunds abortion providers like Planned Parenthood for one year, and offers smaller subsidies. Perhaps most devastatingly, the plan discontinues the Medicaid expansion and caps the Medicaid funding distributed to states to deprive the program of nearly $800 billion over the next decade. Continue reading “GOP Cuts Would Devastate Social Programs That Already Struggle to Meet the Needs of Poor Americans, Nonprofit Service Providers Warn”

McConnell’s claim that Senate GOP health bill would not ’cause anyone currently on Medicaid to come off it’

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell misleadingly claims that the Senate’s health-care proposal won’t lead to cuts in Medicaid. (Video: Meg Kelly, Julio Negron/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Kids in pro-Trump rural areas have a lot to lose if GOP rolls back Medicaid

The following article by Noam N. Levey was posted on the Los Angeles Times website July 6, 2017:

Communities like this aging West Virginia coal town along the Kanawha River were key to President Trump’s victory last year; more than two-thirds of voters in surrounding Fayette County backed the Republican nominee.

Now, families in this rural county and hundreds like it that supported Trump face the loss of a critical safety net for children as congressional Republicans move to cut hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade from Medicaid, the half-century-old government health plan for the poor. Continue reading “Kids in pro-Trump rural areas have a lot to lose if GOP rolls back Medicaid”

The Illusory Savings From Cutting Medicaid

The following article by Steve Chapman was posted on the Creators.com website June 25, 2017:

Image: JessicaGale via Morguefile.com

When economists talk in their sleep, they say, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” This axiom is drilled into them from day one of their undergraduate education and never leaves their minds. Any economist who tried to deny it would find herself suddenly choking in pain and unable to speak.

What it means is that if the government does something that costs money, some human somewhere will bear the expense. “Free” public schools, “free” parks and “free” roads all have to be paid for by the citizenry. Collectively, we can’t get something for nothing.

This useful insight has long been offered as an objection to costly government programs. But it applies as well to measures that extract savings from costly government programs. Continue reading “The Illusory Savings From Cutting Medicaid”