Last night, House Republicans released the text of their reconciliation bill and, as expected, it calls for the largest cut to Medicaid in history. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the bill would cause 13.7 million Americans to lose their health coverage.  The sole purpose of this carnage is to fund tax cuts to the ultra-rich. 

President Trump promised he would not touch Medicaid or its benefits – but now we can all see that the GOP in Congress is poised to do just that: to trade our health to put a little more in the pockets of the richest people in the world. Make no mistake, this bill is an all-out attack on our health care system cutting the heart out of both Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, stripping over 13 million Americans of their coverage, and raising insurance costs and limiting healthcare access for millions. 

These GOP proposed cuts will have massive repercussions for our health care system. People’s health care needs won’t change; state and local governments will just have far less money to cover them. Emergency rooms will see more uninsured individuals. Hospitals and mental health facilities will lay off workers, and will close–impacting not only Medicaid members but everyone with employer-based insurance too. Uninsured workers will not be able to maintain the medication and services they need to remain employed. 

The bill aims to cut Medicaid spending and coverage via harmful Medicaid work reporting requirements, which would force low-income adults to prove they work 80 hours per month to keep Medicaid. The Congressional proposal is even more extreme than what Arkansas implemented in 2018 under which 18,000 eligible people who were meeting the requirements lost coverage in a few months. Work reporting requirements add paperwork obligations and bureaucratic hoops that states’ systems do not have the capacity to handle, which causes health coverage loss even for people who are working. The purpose of these requirements is to increase the red tape so eligible people cannot qualify or maintain coverage. 

We are not fooled by the statements that these massive cuts merely address “fraud and abuse” in the system. The bill uses Medicaid as a piggy bank to pay for tax cuts for the powerful and wealthy. Plain and simple. This bill hurts working class and low-income people to extend huge tax breaks for billionaires, big corporations and special interests.

Voters support Medicaid and other social net programs because they know that the programs work. Poll after poll shows voters do not support cuts to Medicaid. Medicaid insures nearly 80 million people in America and is as popular as Medicare and Social Security. 

Republicans who promised not to cut Medicaid benefits should vote no. The President should uphold his promise not to cut Medicaid. 

We all must tell Congress to stop taking health coverage and healthcare from millions of Americans just to further enrich the wealthiest few.

The Call to Action:

Now that we have the text and House leadership’s plans to make massive cuts to Medicaid and the ACA are irrefutable, we need to ramp up our efforts and keep pressure on electeds in their plans to take health care away from people and make it so uncomfortable and untenable that leadership is forced to change course entirely. 

Here’s where to focus your efforts:

• Flood E&C member offices with phone calls even if your member is not on E&C, log calls to their office this week as well. Again, we’re using SEIU’s call in number, 866-426-2631, and this template script. 
  • This action is important for keeping up pressure on members and holding them accountable, particularly as this process moves forward and we get closer to another joint recess at the end of the month. 
  • In addition to keeping this pressure on, logging these calls regularly helps us continue to get up-to-date intel from these offices about where members stand (when they flip, it’ll be quickly, and we’ll want to be well-positioned to coalesce around these members). 
• Now’s the time to make public noise. Press conferences, public events, strategic social media uproar (especially when you tag members directly) is all important for sending a message to the members of E&C voting this week, and to members who are watching how this goes in preparation for the next phases in this process when they, too, will have to vote. Check out all of our tools for helping you organize here. If you need help getting started on social media, check out Community Catalyst’s posts on Linkedin, Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
• Please sign and share this petition with your networks to tell Congress: HANDS OFF MEDICAID!

The E&C markup vote is scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday, May 13 at 2:00 p.m. ET. You can watch live here. It will likely go well into the night. Members will offer amendments to be voted on, but we’re not expecting the text to change substantially.