Confirmed: Massive Medicaid cuts coming to our neighbors.
Ask John McGuire why.
A few days ago, I wrote about how Rep. McGuire’s recent budget vote almost guaranteed cuts to Medicaid—the source of health coverage for 18,000 of his own low-income constituents. Yesterday, at the request of House Democrats, the Congressional Budget Office published a study on the GOP’s budget, and it’s as bad as suspected.
[Update: After I published this note, I saw a helpful BlueSky post from the Staunton County Democratic Party pointing to House Democrats’ numbers on the GOP budget. They report a dramatically higher number of people in VA-05 who could lose their Medicaid coverage: 201,235 constituents on Medicaid, including 90,000 children and more than 18,000 seniors. I think the difference is that I assumed a 10 percent drop in enrollees, whereas it looks like the House Dems are assuming a complete rollback.]
The Washington Post’s Jacob Bogage has a well-reported piece on how the CBO’s numbers break down. The whole piece is well worth reading, but I’ll pull the key point that makes it clear just how much John McGuire has been obfuscating about this.
Rep. McGuire and other Republicans have been saying that their budget doesn’t mention Medicaid. That’s true but highly misleading: What their budget does is require $880 billion in cuts over ten years from programs overseen by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. That committee oversees a bunch of other programs in addition to Medicaid, so at least in theory, they could achieve their $880 billion in cuts by hitting everything but Medicaid
But as the CBO report makes clear, that’s actually impossible.
As Bogage writes (emphasis is mine):
The Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday that reducing costs [by $880 billion] won’t be possible without cuts to Medicare, Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Without those programs, funding within the Energy and Commerce Committee’s jurisdiction totals $381 billion, and of that amount, more than half is already paid for by collection programs or user fees. That means that even if the committee eliminated every program besides those safety net benefits, it would be able to save a maximum of $135 billion—far less than the $880 billion the budget calls for.
You’d be well within your rights to ask Rep. McGuire why he voted for a budget that means 18,000 of his own constituents will get worse health coverage, or perhaps end up with none at all.