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As Republicans and Democrats prepare to face off about Medicaid cuts in next week’s Energy and Commerce Committee meetings at the House of Representatives, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is vehemently speaking out against threats to Medicaid.
“They’re robbing people in order to hand it over to the rich,” the progressive New York lawmaker tells Rolling Stone. “Medicaid is one of the largest insurers in the United States of America.”
Republicans are considering a range of proposals to slash Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for low-income people and those with disabilities, in order to fund an extension of Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which disproportionately benefited the wealthy. Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans are trying to pass the bill by Memorial Day, but the Medicaid fight is a tough one for Republicans — particularly those in swing states or in red states whose constituents heavily rely on Medicaid. Nearly 82 million people rely on Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program for their health care coverage.
“They’re not just out here to cut health care for health care’s sake, they have an assignment,” says Ocasio-Cortez. “Their assignment is to cut the taxes of their donors, and to have giveaways to Big Oil, which financed their election, Big Tech, which financed their election, Elon [Musk], [Jeff] Bezos, etc.”
She continues, “In order to do that, you have to gut what is left of the health care and social safety net in the United States. They’re doing it because they have to hand over a bag.”
Ocasio-Cortez referenced a Congressional Budget Office report on Wednesday that scored parts of Republicans’ Medicaid plan. “They confirmed millions of Americans will be left out in the cold from their cuts on Medicaid,” she says.
The House’s Energy and Commerce Committee plans to meet early next week to mark up its reconciliation bill, which has yet to be formally introduced. Republicans have committed to cutting $880 billion in spending under the committee’s purview; it would be impossible to do that without significantly slashing Medicaid.
One of the ways Republicans are considering cutting Medicaid spending is to add work requirements to the program, which Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is against, because it adds burdensome paperwork demands that could lead to eligible beneficiaries losing their insurance for administrative reasons.
Medicaid has strict income caps, so adding work requirements could also force people to perform low-wage jobs in order to maintain their health insurance coverage.
The majority of people covered under Medicaid are already working, according to a KFF report studying Medicaid enrollees which also found that many of those not working couldn’t because of caregiving responsibilities, illness or disability. If the federal government enacted work requirements, a 2023 CBO report found that about 600,000 people would lose coverage, but the policy would not increase employment. During his first administration, Trump encouraged states to add work requirements to Medicaid eligibility. When Arkansas implemented the policy, it resulted in thousands losing coverage. Eventually a court struck down the policy.
Democrats like Ocasio-Cortez argue that the administrative burden and red tape of work requirements would result in a huge loss of coverage for Americans. Critics of Medicaid cuts are also extremely concerned about how it would affect rural hospitals and other providers whose patients rely on Medicaid, arguing it would destabilize health care for communities beyond those who have Medicaid as their health insurance.
The committee markup is expected to take place on Tuesday.
