Mike Johnson and Russ Vought Continue to Lie About Medicaid Cuts

Yahoo

2 days ago

Donald Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, alleged without evidence that 'no one will lose [Medicaid] coverage as a result' of the House's proposed budget. House Speaker Mike Johnson similarly claimed 'People will not lose their Medicaid unless they choose to do so.'
'There are no Medicaid cuts in the big, beautiful bill,' Johnson said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press. 'We're not cutting Medicaid.'
'This bill will preserve and protect the programs, the social safety net, but it will make it much more commonsense,' Vought said on CNN's State of the Union. 'Look, one out of every five or six dollars in Medicaid is improper. We have illegal immigrants on the program. We have able-bodied working adults that don't have a work requirement that they would have in TANF or even SNAP. And that's something that's very important to institute. That's what this bill does. No one will lose coverage as a result of this bill.'
There's a lot to unpack here. Vought, who was a major architect of Project 2025, said that between one fifth and one sixth of Medicaid spending is 'improper.' According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, in 2024, however, just 7.66 percent of payments were considered 'improper.' But 'improper' covers a lot of payments, including underpayments, overpayments, and payments where there is not enough information to determine if a payment was proper. In other words, improper is not a synonym for fraudulent.
Vought additionally claimed that undocumented immigrants are on Medicaid. Except for emergency room services in certain situations, federal Medicaid funds cannot be used to cover undocumented immigrants. Some states, however, have chosen to use their own funds to provide health coverage to undocumented immigrants, including children.
Lastly, Vought and Johnson said the bill will not cause people to lose coverage.
Several experts and organizations expose this for the lie that it is.
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), if the Republican budget passes, it would reduce federal Medicaid spending by $723 billion, and 7.6 million people would lose Medicaid coverage by 2034, thanks in large part to new work requirements for those age 18-64. Other changes to the program, such as stricter and more frequent eligibility checks, will also likely lead to lost coverage.
Citing two states that have implemented similar work requirements on Medicaid recipients to those proposed in the GOP bill, Jennifer Tolbert, deputy director of the Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured and the director of State Health Policy and Data at Kaiser Family Foundation, said on PBS, 'These new rules pose barriers to people enrolling in coverage and lead to coverage loss. And this is loss of coverage among people who are eligible for the requirements, but who have difficulty navigating the reporting requirements and providing the documentation needed to verify that they in fact meet the requirement.'
The left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, which estimated that up to 14.4 million people could lose coverage over the next 10 years, said, 'Research shows — and the CBO previously concluded — that work requirements do not increase employment. Instead, they lead enrollees who lose coverage to take on more medical debt, delay getting needed medical care, and delay taking medications.'
Losing coverage can lead to serious consequences. Having coverage saves lives. One study by the National Bureau of Economic research found that Medicaid expansions increased enrollment by 12 percent and reduced mortality among low-income adults by 2.5 percent, and new Medicaid enrollees were 21 percent less likely to die compared to before they had coverage.
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