“The president has said repeatedly, we’re not going to hurt Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid recipients who are eligible for it. And that is our guiding north, our true north,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told Punchbowl News last month.
In his rural Louisiana district, nearly 25% of adults under age 65 rely on Medicaid, according to an NBC News analysis.
“I understand this acutely — it directly affects my people. We’re going to be very careful not to cut a benefit for anyone who is eligible to receive it and relies upon it,” Johnson told Punchbowl.
But last month, the Congressional Budget Office, which is nonpartisan, said House Republicans can’t meet their budget target without making significant cuts to Medicaid or Medicare, the nation’s health insurance program for seniors.
In the House, the Medicaid budget falls under the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and the Republican budget plan instructs that committee to cut spending.
In February, Johnson said that “we’re going to cut the fraud, waste and abuse and that’s where we’re going to get the savings to accomplish this mission.”
It would be very difficult to make the proposed Republican cuts just by targeting fraud, waste and abuse, said Megan Cole Brahim, an associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health and co-director of the school’s Medicaid Policy Lab.
“This on the surface seems like a reasonable idea — nobody likes fraud, waste or abuse,” she said. “But there is a misalignment between the proposed cuts the Republicans are trying to make [and] the actual scope of fraud and waste.”
Johnson identified another way he intends to save Medicaid dollars.
“You’ve got a lot of able-bodied workers, young men who could be out working, who are choosing not to because they’re on the government wagon,” he told Punchbowl. “I think that’s wrong, and I think if you get those people out of the program — and there’s a large number of them — then you preserve it for the people who actually need it and deserve it.”
Cole Brahim called this a “false narrative,” pointing to a KFF study that shows in 2023, nearly two-thirds of adults ages 19-64 covered by Medicaid were working and nearly 3 in 10 were not working because of caregiving responsibilities, illness or disability, or school attendance.
In the McLaurins’ case, Ronnie McLaurin doesn’t have health insurance through his work as a self-employed electrician.
