Medicaid Cuts
U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff (D–GA) claims that the Big Beautiful Bill “gutted” Medicaid.
IN FACT, the BBB only cuts Medicaid for able-bodied loafers, illegal immigrants, other aliens, fraudsters, and states like California that exploited the program. Meanwhile, the portion of the U.S. population receiving Medicaid has more than doubled since 2000, while the poverty rate is the same. Here are the specifics:
- To receive Medicaid, the BBB requires “nonpregnant, nondisabled adults, aged 19 through 64” who don’t have a “dependent child under the age of 14” to “complete a minimum of 80 hours” per “month” of “work,” “community service, or enrollment in an education program.”
- The BBB prevents illegal immigrants and other aliens from receiving Medicaid under executive fiats that make them “lawfully present” for the purpose of receiving government benefits even though they don’t have “legal status” to be in the United States.
- The BBB contains a range of fraud prevention measures like “address verification” and “ensuring deceased individuals do not remain enrolled” in Medicaid, which has the second-highest level of improper payments among all federal programs.
- The BBB stops states like California from using a tax kickback scheme to obtain more federal money for Medicaid, which is fungible and can be used to fund comprehensive Medicaid coverage for illegal immigrants, as California does for 1.7 million aliens.
- The BBB lowers the max copay for Medicaid recipients who are not poor from $100 to $35 and requires states that charge them no copays to at least charge them something, in accord with gold standard studies which found that no-copay Medicaid coverage increases expensive visits to emergency rooms for “conditions that may be most readily treatable in primary care settings.”
- The portion of the U.S. population receiving Medicaid has risen from 12% in 2000 to 26% in 2024, while the poverty rate was 11% in 2000 and 2024.
