KFF Health News February 21, 2025
Congressional lawmakers are facing tricky arithmetic as they hammer out a budget plan to finance President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Republicans need to free up roughly $4 trillion to pay for renewing Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which expire at the end of the year. Trump has vowed not to touch the costliest government programs, including Medicare and Social Security.
He’s been less clear about his plan for Medicaid.
On Wednesday, he endorsed a House GOP plan that cuts at least $880 billion from, very likely, Medicaid — the federal-state health insurance program for Americans with low incomes or disabilities.
As my colleague Phil Galewitz reports, changes to expand Medicaid have become entrenched in most states — and...