House Passes Budget Blueprint With Details on Medicaid Cuts Other Healthcare Provisions Yet To Come
But major cuts to federal for Medicaid are a likely outcome of the $1.5-$2 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years that the Republican-backed budget resolution calls for.
The House passed a budget resolution last night that will likely mean major cuts in federal funding of Medicaid, although the details of the tax and spending cuts are yet to be worked on.
The budget plan calls for between $4 trillion and $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over the next 10 years, the bulk of which are likely to come in the form of a continuation of the tax cuts enacted during the first Trump administration.
The budget plan pairs those tax cuts with between $1.5 and $2 trillion cuts in federal spending over the same period.
How those spending cuts will be achieved will be the subject of intense negotiation between House Republicans and their counterparts in the Senate.
According to several media accounts, House committees will be responsible for coming up with specific spending cut proposals. The House Energy and Commerce, which has jurisdiction over the Medicaid program, is expected to come up with $880 billion in cuts, with major cuts in federal funding of Medicaid as one of the primary ways that amount of reduced spending could be accomplished.
Pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) reform is expected to be part of the budget negotiation because it would save the federal government money. The health subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce is holding a hearing today on PBM reform starting at 10 a.m.
President Donald Trump heralded the House budget resolution last night in a post on Truth Social, which said, in part, that the “House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it!”
A post on the Republican-controlled website for the House Ways and Committee said the budget plan “sets the stage to extend the successful Trump tax cuts, provide new tax relief to American workers, small businesses, and families, and deliver on enhanced border security, stronger national security, and more American-made energy.”
All the Democrats in the House voted against the budget resolution. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement that the budget will “set in motion the largest Medicaid cut in American history. It’s outrageous. Children will be devastated. Families, devastated. People with disabilities, devastated. Older Americans, devastated. Hospitals, devastated. Nursing homes, devastated.”
The budget resolution was also criticized by some as being fiscally irresponsible. Rep. Thomas Massie, from Kentucky, the lone Republican to vote against it, did so for that reason.
Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in a statement that it is “truly unfathomable that when confronted with multi-trillion-dollar deficits and debt climbing towards record highs, lawmakers’ response is to pass a budget allowing themselves to add trillions more in debt over the next decade.”
In this episode of the "Meet the Board" podcast series, Briana Contreras, Managed Healthcare Executive editor, speaks with Ateev Mehrotra, a member of the MHE editorial advisory board and a professor of healthcare policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School. Mehtrotra is also a hospitalist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. In the discussion, Contreras gets to know Mehrotra more on a personal level and picks his brain on some of his research interests including telehealth, alternative payment models and price transparency.
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