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seniors
GOP Medicaid Cuts Are a Dagger Pointed Directly at Our Most Vulnerable
Every moment that activists can delay the passage of these Medicaid cuts is more time to mount an opposition. Republicans might not want to admit it, but support for Medicaid is strong and deep.
May 16, 2025
The numbers are clear. Nursing home residents depend on Medicaid. According to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, fully 63% of nursing home care in the United States is funded by Medicaid. Some states are even more dependent on Medicaid than the national average. For example, in West Virginia fully 77% of nursing home care is funded by Medicaid.
Politico reported on the morning of May 15 that after a marathon markup session lasting 26 hours, the House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced legislation that “would slash Medicaid spending by hundreds of billions of dollars.” These cuts would directly impact nursing home residents and their families. The Washington Post reports that:
“Their [nursing home residents] coverage will be at risk,” said Katie Sloan Smith, president and chief executive of LeadingAge, a Washington lobbying association for operators of nonprofit senior-care facilities. “Either the home itself will have to make up for that loss in some way or they will simply have to say, ‘We can no longer support people on Medicaid’ and close those beds.”
While the Medicaid cuts would hurt nursing home patients, they would also severely impact those who receive care at home (often referred to as home and community-based care). According to National Public Radio, Medicaid pays for care at home for roughly 4.5 million Americans.
The Medicaid cuts that passed the Energy and Commerce Committee would devastate America’s family caregivers as Medicaid also funds caregiver respite programs and caregiver training. The cuts would hurt our most vulnerable and their families.
Where are our citizens on the question of Medicaid cuts? The evidence clearly shows that the American people oppose Medicaid cuts. In fact, there is support for more spending on Medicaid. Polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation published in March of this year found that 42% want to see an increase in Medicaid spending. Just under 3 in 4 (73%) of respondents say that Medicaid is important to their local communities. Democrats (83%), Independents (74%), and Republicans (61%) all see Medicaid as very important to their local community.
Late Thursday May 15, the fate of the measure that passed the Energy and Commerce Committee was in doubt as the legislation moves to a vote in the House of Representatives. There will no doubt be more twists and turns before the measure heads to the Senate. Every moment that activists can delay the passage of these Medicaid cuts is more time to mount an opposition. Republicans might not want to admit it, but support for Medicaid is strong and deep.
This is the greatest threat to Medicaid since its creation in 1965. The GOP legislation is a dagger pointed directly at our most vulnerable. Many of those who would be impacted by Medicaid cuts are not able to raise their voices. Therefore, it up to those of us who can, to raise our voices and tell our elected representatives to reject these cruel proposals that would devastate our families, friends, and neighbors. The stakes in the debate over Medicaid are far too high for any of us to stay silent.
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Republicans Plan to Rip Medicaid Away from Millions of Seniors — All to Give Tax Cuts to Billionaires
It is impossible to cut hundreds of billions from Medicaid without hurting massive numbers of seniors. Unless we stop them, that is exactly what GOP lawmakers are about to do.
May 13, 2025
Republicans are preparing to give trillions in tax handouts to millionaires and billionaires. How do they plan to pay for these tax handouts? By stealing health care from 13.7 million Americans, including destroying Medicaid as a functioning system for millions of seniors, children, and people with disabilities.
Older Americans and their families are often shocked to learn that, under most circumstances, Medicare doesn’t cover long term care. Medicaid does. In fact, Medicaid pays for over 60 percent of nursing home care. It also covers other types of long-term care, such as in-home care. And, Medicaid covers premiums and out-of-pocket costs for millions of low-income people with Medicare.
To qualify for Medicaid long term care, many seniors have to “spend down” their assets and savings. This is morally wrong. We will never stop fighting for a Medicare for All system, where everyone in America gets high quality health care that is free at point of service. But as flawed as the current system is, it’s far better than the Republican alternative — ripping away Medicaid, so that seniors who need long term care (and other care not covered by Medicare) can’t get it at all.
The bottom line: People will die because they can’t get the care they need.
Make no mistake: Republican Medicaid cuts will devastate seniors, ripping away critical care. Republicans are planning to make $880 billion in spending cuts to pay for the tax handout to the wealthy, and the majority of those cuts will come from Medicaid. It is impossible to cut hundreds of billions from Medicaid without hurting massive numbers of seniors.
Several of the Medicaid cuts they are considering amount to different ways of giving states far fewer federal dollars to spend on Medicaid. That means states will have to scale back their Medicaid programs, which will inevitably hurt seniors.
These cuts will hit all hospitals, but will almost immediately devastate rural hospitals, which rely on federal Medicaid dollars to stay afloat. America’s Essential Hospitals, the group representing these hospitals, says that the Republican plan “would cause children, pregnant patients, and disabled people to lose access to their coverage. Older populations living in nursing homes would also risk losing their health care coverage.”
If Republicans pass their Medicaid cuts into law, hospitals around the country — disproportionately in red states, which are more rural — will close. That’s on top of 200 rural hospitals that have already closed in the last decade. These closures won’t just impact people on Medicaid. It will devastate entire communities that rely on these hospitals.
Seniors with medical emergencies are in no position to drive hundreds of miles to a different hospital. This will also increase the burden on family caregivers, who will now have to travel further to get their spouse or aging parents to the hospital. The bottom line: People will die because they can’t get the care they need.
Congressional Republicans want to ruin the lives of millions more seniors, by taking away their Medicaid.
At the same time Republicans are planning these enormous Medicaid cuts, the Trump-Musk regime is breaking Social Security. They’ve pushed out 7,000 of the public servants who help Americans claim their earned benefits, with more layoffs to come. Field offices around the country have lost half their staff, leading to much longer wait times — if you can get an appointment at all.
Like the planned Medicaid cuts, these Social Security cuts are disproportionately hurting people living in rural areas and people with disabilities. If they can’t navigate the increasingly glitchy website, they may have to travel hundreds of miles to a Social Security office for an appointment.
The Musk henchmen running Social Security are also wrongly declaring people dead, cutting them off from their earned benefits as well as their credit cards and bank accounts — financial murder. People are flooding overwhelmed field offices, desperate to fix the error. In one keystroke, the Trump-Musk regime is ruining their lives. And Congressional Republicans want to ruin the lives of millions more seniors, by taking away their Medicaid.
All of this suffering is completely preventable. America is the wealthiest country in the history of the world. Republicans want to rip health care away from tens of millions of people to give tax cuts to billionaires. Instead, let’s make those billionaires pay their fair share — and use the money to give everyone in America the health care they need.
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Medicare Advantage Bribery Scheme Highlights 'Bad Behavior' Trump Wants to Reward
"The Trump administration recently announced it would substantially increase payments to private Medicare Advantage plans in 2026, rewarding their bad behavior."
May 02, 2025
Healthcare advocates have long condemned the for-profit insurance companies that manage Medicare Advantage plans for overbilling the federal government by hundreds of billions of dollars per year, using artificial intelligence and algorithms to deny patients' claims, and tricking patients with disabilities via deceptive marketing practices—and a lawsuit originally initiated by a whistleblower is accusing three such private insurance giants of taking part in overt bribery.
The U.S. Department of Justice filed a complaint Thursday under the False Claims Act, accusing three of the largest Medicare Advantage insurers—Aetna, Humana, and Elevance Health—of paying brokers hundreds of millions of dollars to steer beneficiaries toward their plans, and to steer disabled seniors away in an effort to keep them more profitable.
The American Economic Liberties Project (AELP) noted that the lawsuit comes from an unlikely place—the Trump administration, which last month announced it would substantially increase payments to the privately run plans, increasing rates to the tune of $25 billion in additional funds next year despite their history of defrauding the government and patients.
While applauding the DOJ for cracking down on the bribery scheme, the group noted that "despite its promises to crack down on such wasteful spending, the Trump administration recently announced it would substantially increase payments to private Medicare Advantage plans in 2026, rewarding their bad behavior."
Dr. Mehmet Oz, who President Donald Trump appointed to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has also advocated for a proposal called Medicare Advantage for All—further expanding the for-profit plans that now cover more than half of Americans who are eligible for Medicare.
"For years, these firms have driven seniors into worse care with deceptive marketing and discrimination, but now it's clear they're crooks too."
The lawsuit filed Thursday also named three brokers—eHealth, Inc., GoHealth, Inc., and SelectQuote Inc.—and said that between 2016-21, the companies "paid hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks to the defendant brokers in exchange for enrollments into the insurers' Medicare Advantage plans."
The brokers are accused of directing beneficiaries to the plans that paid them the most in kickbacks, regardless of the suitability of the plans. They also allegedly provided their employees with incentives to sell plans based on the payments from the three insurers and refused to sell Medicare Advantage plans for the three companies if they didn't pay the brokers sufficiently.
Aetna and Humana are also accused of conspiring with the brokers to "discriminate against Medicare beneficiaries with disabilities whom they perceived to be less profitable," threatening to withhold payments unless brokers enrolled fewer disabled senior citizens.
"Private Medicare Advantage plans routinely fail to deliver quality care—especially for seniors and the most vulnerable—and are among the most wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive actors in our healthcare system," said Emma Freer, senior policy analyst for healthcare at AELP. "For years, these firms have driven seniors into worse care with deceptive marketing and discrimination, but now it's clear they're crooks too—bribing brokers behind closed doors because they know no one would choose these plans on a level playing field."
In addition to cracking down on the bribery scheme, Freer called on Trump's DOJ to "move swiftly on its ongoing monopolization and fraud investigations in the largest Medicare Advantage plan provider, UnitedHealth Group."
The DOJ opened an investigation in February into UnitedHealth's effect on competition in insurance, pharmacy benefit management, physician networks, and other sectors of the for-profit healthcare industry.
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