How Medicaid Cuts Will Cost Some 12 Million People Health Coverage

Republicans in Congress finally settled on a massive legislative package aimed at realizing President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda, and it won’t come cheap. The bill the Senate and House of Representatives approved in July for Trump to sign into law cuts taxes by some $4.5 trillion over a decade and adds hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending for defense, border wall construction, immigrant detention centers and other administration priorities.

To help offset the impact on the federal deficit, Republicans included major spending cuts in the bill, too. The centerpiece of the cost savings is a cut of nearly $1 trillion over ten years to Medicaid, the public health insurance program for low-income and disabled people.