WASHINGTON – Every time a baby is born in Louisiana, where Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson Won a handy re -election last year, there is more than 60% chance that taxpayers will finance birth Via Medicaid.
In Republican representative. David Valadao ‘s Central California District, 6 out of 10 people use Medicaid to pay for doctor’s visits and emergency trips.
And a third of the population are covered by Medicaid in Gop Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s Alaska, one of the most expensive corners of the health care nation.
Each of these Republicans and some of their conservative colleagues will stand in line last week to defend Medicaid, in a departure of long-held GOP policy. Republicans, who have already excluded enormous cutbacks on social security and medicine, focus their attention on the pivot of no less than $ 880 billion of Medicaid in the following decade to finance $ 4.5 trillion in tax cuts.
But like a deadline for Avoid a partial closure of the government Near is that hesitation is popping up among the Republican legislators of Washington – once reliable critics of elevated government social welfare programs such as Medicaid – who say that deep cuts on the health care program can be too untenable for people who are at home.
“I have heard of countless voters who tell me that the only way they can afford healthcare is through programs such as Medicaid,” Valadao said on the house floor. “And I will not support a final reconciliation law that runs the risk of leaving them behind.”
And on Wednesday, President Donald Trump also made his position about Medicaid clear: “We’re not going to touch it.”
States and the Federal Government jointly pay for Medicaid, which offers almost free cover for healthcare for around 80 million poor and disabled Americans, including millions of children. It cost $ 880 billion to work in 2023.
Johnson has excluded two of the largest potential cuts: paying fixed, shrunken rates to States for Care and changing the calculation for the share of the federal dollars that every state receives for Medicaid. Only a few years ago spears the spearhead a report That lobbyed for some of those changes during the first Trump administration.
Johnson was in a CNN interview that the focus will instead of Ferrets “Fraud, Wasting and Abuse, in Medicaid, although it is unlikely that the savings republicans are looking for.
Gop -pressure on Medicaid is mounting, with some leaders of the state parties participating in the calls to retain the program. States already struggle With the growing costs of sicker patients and can be left to cover more if the federal government withdraws. In some states, the federal government collects more than 80%.
More than a dozen GOP laws in Minnesota wrote the president who recently warned that “too deep of a cut is at least unmanageable.” Government Joe Lombardo, r-Nev., told Congress in a letter that would “endanger lives proposed.” In Alaska, the majority leader of the Senate Senate Cathy Giessel, a Republican and nurse, called “enormous care” during a speech.
Nationally, 55% of Americans said that the government spends too little on Medicaid, according to a poll from January of the Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research.
“It is now a very popular program that affects a very wide cross -section of American society,” said Drew Altman, president of the Healthcare Research Agency. “About half of the American people say that she or a family member were ever served by the program.”
Significant changes in Medicaid are still on the table. They must be for Republicans to get the savings they need to pay for tax cuts.
Work requirements, which can save no less than $ 109 billion in the coming decadeseem to have solid support with GOP members, with some individual states led by the Republicans who are already moving to implement them.
Republicans can also consider the cutbacks in benefits or coverage, as well as eliminating a tax tax that States use to finance Medicaid, Altman added.
Democrats warn that reductions are inevitable and can be terrible.
From Monday, TV advertisements will warn people in 20 conference districts that hospitals are at risk and millions of people can lose cover if Republicans cut medicaid “to finance mass cuts for Elon Musk and billionaires.” The majority of the Democratic Super Political Action Committee Committee has launched the campaign with seven figures.
Trump and Republicans have called for years to lower government spending on health care, but they have difficulty formulating a serious plan that gets grip. For example, Trump spent almost a decade with pleading for a revision of the affordable care act. His efforts to withdraw national healthcare legislation from the Obama era failed during his first term and in his most recent presidential campaign, he only offered “concepts of a plan” to adjust the program.
Michael Cannon, a director of health studies at the Libertarian Cato Institute, believes that Medicaid needs a revision because it is an important part of the federal budget and a contribution to the growing fault of the nation.
But Republicans, he said, don’t look at serious ways to fall the costs of health care.
“The only reason for the cutbacks is currently to pay for tax cuts,” said Cannon. “None of them is talking about the need to do a better health reform.”
Associated Press writer Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska and AP conference correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
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