Trump's Silence on Medicaid Speaks Volumes on His Plan to Gut Health Care | Opinion

President Donald Trump addressed a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, March 4, for 100 minutes. He gave an estimated 9,934-word speech, spending 25 minutes on culture war issues, nine minutes on tariffs that will raise prices by 20 percent on everyday items, and just two minutes on reducing prices, but one word of enormous concern for millions of Americans was left out of his speech altogether—Medicaid.

For years, President Trump has promised on and off the campaign trail to "love and cherish" Medicaid. He has gone so far as to say that people's Medicaid benefits wouldn't be affected by his budget cuts. In reality, if the Republicans' proposed budget plan goes through, we will see draconian cuts to Medicaid, with some published reports estimating cuts as high as $2 trillion over time.

Republicans have repeated the party line that the budget resolution "doesn't even mention Medicaid in the bill." While literally true, this assertion obscures the disturbing reality that though the text of the Republican budget resolution does not directly refer to Medicaid, the plan directs Energy and Commerce, the congressional committee that oversees Medicaid, to find $880 billion in spending cuts that can only be found by gutting Medicaid. This reality has been further confirmed by a letter from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which suggests that Republicans can't meet their own budget target necessary to pass President Donald Trump's legislative agenda without making significant cuts to Medicare or Medicaid. The Republican budget would cut Medicaid even if its supporters refuse to admit it.

This is not to say that programs shouldn't be evaluated, streamlined, or optimized to ensure tax dollars are spent as effectively and efficiently as possible. But that is not the current proposal. This is not simply rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse. This is an application of the new Republican DEI agenda—Devastating, Extreme, and Irresponsible.

Part of the disturbing reality is that these cuts are not the result of an audit to improve Medicaid or health care; they are designed specifically to help pay for the president's enormous tax proposal, which will overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans. While they enjoy the tax giveaways, it would be millions of other Americans who would suffer the consequences of the Republican Medicaid cuts.

I know this firsthand from reviewing the data while speaking to doctors, public health officials, and residents across my home state of Illinois. More than 3.4 million Illinoisans rely on Medicaid. Fifty percent of all births in Illinois are covered by Medicaid. Two-thirds of all Illinois nursing home residents are covered by Medicaid. Almost one-quarter of all hospital admissions in Illinois are paid for by Medicaid. These services—and the coverage that makes them possible—are under siege by the Republican budget, along with pregnant mothers, seniors in nursing homes, children, and people with disabilities who would bear the brunt of these cuts.

Not only will people on Medicaid see catastrophic cuts to their health insurance coverage, but even those who are not insured by the program will feel the negative effects across the health care system. Lurie Children's, a top-ranked children's hospital in the United States, said that if the Republican budget proposal is passed, it will, put "access to care for all children in our state at risk." Slashing the Medicaid program so deeply will create enormous strain on hospitals and health care providers, fundamentally disrupting the system and overwhelming emergency rooms and other resources relied upon by those without insurance. We will see hospitals closing, less money dedicated to researching disease, and a weakened health care system for everyone, whether on employer-provided insurance, private market insurance, or Medicare.

As millions of Americans wait to find out if congressional Republicans and President Trump will succeed in stripping them of their health insurance, the president did not think it was even worth saying the word "Medicaid" in his marathon-length speech on the state of our country. Each day, my office and those of my colleagues are contacted by individuals, families, and organizations reminding us of the immense human toll of gutting such an important program. For American seniors and working families, Medicaid is not simply too important a program to go unmentioned; it is also too important to cut.

Raja Krishnamoorthi serves as ranking member of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.