President Donald Trump tweeted this chart on Wednesday afternoon, claiming that the Senate Republican health care bill actually increases funding for Medicaid:
We fixed Donald Trump’s misleading chart that claims Republicans are increasing Medicaid funding
Here’s the problem: It’s incredibly misleading.
You can’t just look at raw dollar figures spent on a given program. Even with no changes to current law, inflation and population growth increase tax revenues, increase the federal budget, and cause programs to cost more in raw dollars.
So what would this chart look like if we superimposed Medicaid spending under current law? Like this:
What you’re looking at is a massive cut in Medicaid spending. In 2026, the Better Care Reconciliation Act would cut Medicaid spending by about $160 billion, and end Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid to low-income Americans.
As my colleague Sarah Kliff writes:
The Senate bill begins to phase out the Medicaid expansion in 2021 — and cuts the rest of the program’s budget too. The Senate bill would end the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid to millions of low-income Americans. This program has provided coverage to more Americans than the private marketplaces
It would also cut the rest of the public insurance program. Better Care would also limit government spending on the rest of the Medicaid program, giving states a set amount to spend per person rather than the insurance program’s currently open-ended funding commitment.
Ultimately, the Congressional Budget Office projects 15 million people would lose coverage with the repeal of Medicaid expansion.
So it’s incredibly misleading for the president to claim that Senate Republicans are increasing funding for Medicaid.
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