Richmond, Virginia—Following several failed votes earlier in the week, late at night on Sunday, the House Budget Committee passed the Republicans’ proposed budget reconciliation bill, which offsets nearly $5 trillion in tax cuts for the top 1% of earners and big corporations with $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid, the program that provides health insurance to one in five Americans. We need a budget bill that prioritizes hardworking families, not ultra-wealthy CEOs like Governor Glenn Youngkin.
“This bill is an attack on working families, children, and seniors in Virginia and across the country,” said LaTwyla Mathias, Executive Director of Progress Virginia. “Slashing Medicaid to give tax breaks to billionaires is both morally indefensible and economically reckless. Families in our community are already struggling to make ends meet, and in some of our most economically vulnerable areas, these cuts will mean choosing between going to the doctor and putting food on the table. We need leaders who prioritize people over profits, not backroom deals that gut the programs keeping our communities healthy and afloat in favor of a wealthy donor class.”
Background:
- The cuts to Medicaid would leave more than 8 million Americans without health insurance, significantly raise costs for millions more, and are projected to cost approximately 450,000 jobs.
- These cuts to vital programs also only partially pay for the massive tax cuts to the richest Americans, which are otherwise paid for by ballooning the near-term deficit.
- Virginians rely heavily on Medicaid: about 35% of the population uses it as their sole or primary health insurance.
- More than 1 in 3 births are covered by the program, and close to half of Virginia children are Medicaid-eligible.
- Those numbers rise dramatically in rural areas of the Commonwealth, and some of the highest percentages of Medicaid recipients live in Southside Virginia, an area that has already been hit hard by rising costs and other federal cuts.
- All in all, 161,614 Virginians will likely lose Medicaid under the reconciliation bill; 262,400 Virginians in total will lose their health insurance between ACA and Medicaid cuts.