03.11.2019 / Press Release
Families USA Released the Following Statement in Response to President Trump’s Proposed Budget for 2020:
Washington, D.C. – Today President Trump revealed his proposed “A Budget for A Better America” for 2020. We are aghast that the Administration’s proposed budget is in part a return to policies that Americans have overwhelmingly rejected — and a blatant stripping of the many health care gains America’s families have enjoyed over the last several years. What is proposed is a gutting of core insurance protections, a dismantling of Medicaid to low-income adults by repealing Medicaid expansion, and cuts of billions of dollars over ten years. But the budget also signals new and deeply concerning policy changes including mandatory new work documentation requirements in Medicaid, and increasing the cost of health insurance premiums for low-income people in the non-group market.
The Administration’s proposed budget cuts approximately $800 billion in federal Medicaid funding over 10 years (2020-2029), ends the ACA Medicaid expansion, imposes a block grant on the entire Medicaid program, and makes work documentation requirements mandatory on states. The cuts to the ACA Medicaid expansion would be partly offset by the new block grants to states, but these block grants still result in a devastating net cut to Medicaid that compounds every year.
As if the impact of these federal policy changes are not damaging enough, the proposed budget is also a veiled attack on states — cuts to Medicaid of this magnitude represent a dramatic cost shift to the states. Federal funding accounts for about 63 percent of total spending on Medicaid across the states. State spending makes up the remaining share of Medicaid spending. If states want to maintain current funding levels for their Medicaid programs, under the Trump budget they would have to find an additional $1.5 trillion to fill the gap in federal funding that this budget would create.
The Trump budget also proposes a net of over $600 billion in Medicare cuts. Some of these are cuts to provider payments, but others are substantial cuts that would directly impact seniors’ pocketbooks.
This budget is more than a symbolic threat to health care access. It is an outright attack on low-income individuals, seniors, and families across the nation. A budget like this will only put them at risk for poor health outcomes, threaten their financial security, and upend their access to care. On behalf of the families across America who stand the most lose, we ask, how does that make America “better”?
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