Senators clashed on Thursday over the extent of President Trump’s proposed cuts to Medicaid in his proposed budget, specifically over how and whether those cuts would actually be made.
Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., began a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Health and Human Services’ 2018 budget by debating its impact on Medicaid.
Wyden highlighted that the budget proposed last month would enact more than $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid and other cuts to popular programs such as Meals on Wheels.
“This is the budget you write if you think seniors and working families have it too easy,” said Wyden, the panel’s ranking member.
But Hatch quickly responded that Wyden was referring to $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid from the American Health Care Act, a partial Obamacare repeal bill that passed the House last month.
“The budget assumes $250 billion in total savings from the repeal and replacement of Obamacare,” committee Chairman Hatch said. “Despite some insinuations to the contrary, it doesn’t incorporate the specific legislative proposals.”
He added that the budget doesn’t assume that “Medicaid reform proposals will be enacted in to law. Any attempt to make that connection is simply unfounded.”
Hatch and Wyden’s comments come as the Senate is figuring out what to do with Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion in their own version of the AHCA. The House bill phases out the expansion in three years, but senators have said that the Senate version will likely have a longer phase out.
