'Complete drivel': Heart doctor tears down GOP's core case for Medicaid cuts

As the Senate staged a voting marathon on amendments to President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” ahead of the July 4 holiday, legislators, academics and physicians warned of the devastation the mega-spending package could cause people reliant on Medicaid.

At least three in four losing coverage would be due to Medicaid cuts in the bill, creating “stress and angst related to having gaps in coverage,” Adrianna McIntyre, an assistant professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told Raw Story.

The bill's focus on kicking off undocumented migrants, in particular, is blown “way, way, way out of proportion” and “complete drivel," Peter Kowey, emeritus chief of cardiology at the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research in Pennsylvania, told Raw Story.

Undocumented patients he’s encountered more often than not have “better health insurance than citizens,” working and purchasing their own plans, he said.

Legislators from left and right spoke out about how the proposed restrictions on Medicaid would harm their constituents, from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who accused Republicans of “cruelty” for supporting the bill poised to “hurt” and “kill people,” to Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who voted against the bill for “betraying a promise” to Americans who would ultimately be pushed off Medicaid.

“Senate Republicans are doubling down on ripping health care away from people and raising costs for families to fund giant tax handouts for billionaires and giant corporations,” Warren told Raw Story in a statement.

“This ugly bill is a slap in the face for families, and I’m taking all my fight to the Senate floor to stop it.”

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The Senate version of the bill proposes increased spending for border security, defense and energy, while decreasing spending on health and nutrition — with 11.8 million Americans set to lose insurance by 2034 with more than $1 trillion in Medicaid funding cut, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

If the bill passes, proposed Medicaid restrictions include work requirements for able-bodied adults and increased eligibility checks — expected to save $325 billion over a decade — and cuts to provider taxes, which states use to fund their Medicaid costs — reducing spending by nearly $191 billion in that time, according to the agency’s estimate.

Still, even with those cuts, the deficit would still grow by more than $3.3 trillion, according to the agency.

Trump urged legislators to continue steaming ahead toward his July 4 deadline, encouraging them to ignore the Senate parliamentarian who determined provider tax cuts and restrictions on care to undocumented individuals were not in compliance with Senate rules.

The White House insisted on Sunday that “there will be no cuts to Medicaid.”

“OBBB protects and strengthens Medicaid for those who rely on it — pregnant women, children, seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income families — while eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse,” it said.

“OBBB removes illegal aliens, enforces work requirements and protects Medicaid for the truly vulnerable.”

‘Buried in patients’

Kowey, who is also chair in cardiovascular research and professor of medicine and clinical pharmacology at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, said physicians “depend on a reasonable Medicaid payment,” and with less reimbursements, practices will fold.

That will make it even harder to get an appointment with physicians “literally buried with patients,” especially when there’s already a shortage of primary care providers, said Kowey, author of the forthcoming book Failure to Treat: How a Broken Healthcare System Puts Patients and Practitioners at Risk.

Plus, hospitals still need to treat "indigent" patients, whether or not they have insurance, Kowey said. More patients without Medicaid will leave hospitals to “suffer the financial consequences and close at a higher rate, and we're all going to suffer for that,” Kowey said.

McIntyre agreed that hospitals and nursing homes “already at the financial margins” stand to close if the Medicaid restrictions pass.

“I think for a lot of folks it means that they won't be able to access health care, or they won't be confident that they can access health care because they won't know if they're going to get a bill from the hospital if they show up,” McIntyre said.

Kowey said the employment requirements in the Republican bill create unnecessary "bureaucracy" as the majority on Medicaid already work.

“These paperwork requirements largely just end up screening people out of coverage, and some of them might come back in,” McIntyre said.

“They might figure out that they've lost coverage, but they might not learn that until they show up needing care, and that could create access issues for them.”

‘Gasoline on the fire’

Veronique de Rugy, senior research fellow and chair in political economy at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a libertarian research center, said the bill would not deliver on its promises for slashing the deficit, calling it “barely pro-growth.”

De Rugy, who advocates for small government and lower taxes, said cuts to Medicaid could go even further.

“If Americans want large spending — they don't want to touch Social Security. They don't want to touch Medicaid. They don't want to touch Medicare. They want all the tax credits for this green energy and this child tax credit and this and that — then they should pay more taxes,” de Rugy said.

“They can't continue financing it on the back of future generations that are going to face much higher taxes and are going to face inflation.”

The White House said the bill “delivers the largest middle- and working-class tax cut in U.S. history.”

That’s a problem if it means future generations pay the price, de Rugy said, adding: “There was a time where the Republican Party used to understand this message.”

Kowey said it was “astounding” that Republicans would propose a bill to “benefit rich people and take money away from Medicaid patients,” which might cost them reelection.

“I hope people make this connection, that the people in Washington not only don't care about you, but they're willing to throw gasoline on fire, which is basically what this legislation is doing,” Kowey said.