Cuts to Medicaid — long considered an untouchable third rail in American politics — now seem inevitable as the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which administers Medicaid, will be charged with saving $880 billion in the GOP-led budget plan. It’s an amount that can only be reached, experts agree, by targeting the Medicaid program.
Specifics of the plan are now coming into view with the Republicans releasing budget reconciliation bill details that reveal substantial cuts to Medicaid, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates “would reduce the number of people with health insurance by at least 8.6 million.” The figure also includes a narrowing of Affordable Care Act (ACA) eligibility.
These popular programs targeted by the GOP bill reach across multiple demographic groups and political constituencies, making them politically volatile. The cuts come as congressional Republicans led by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) work to make President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent, a move that Democrats characterize chiefly as a boon for the richest Americans.
Pelosi posted an AP story on X about the imminent Medicaid and ACA cuts, writing: “The fine print of the bill just revealed by Republicans will rip health care away from millions of Americans to line the pockets of the ultra-rich. With this bill, Republicans are once again showing where their loyalties lie—and it’s not with working families.”
Verifying home address, exempting dead people and non-citizens, and checking eligibility every 6 months of Medicaid recipients rips Medicaid away from FRAUDSTERS, not qualified Americans.
Our loyalty lies with Americans, Democrats loyalty lies with Cartel Terrorists and thieves. https://t.co/8AzSHa2UyC
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
(@RepMTG) May 13, 2025
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) replied directly to Pelosi’s post, snapping back and saying the GOP bill’s intent is to cut fraud and waste from Medicaid — and that it is not aimed at taking away benefits from people who need them.
“Fraudsters” — those purportedly ripping off Medicaid — are the real targets according to Greene, who writes of the Medicaid details in the plan: “Verifying home address, exempting dead people and non-citizens, and checking eligibility every 6 months of Medicaid recipients rips Medicaid away from FRAUDSTERS, not qualified Americans.”
Greene’s suggestion that Medicaid is paying out big money to the deceased — money that is being banked by crooks — has been largely debunked. It resembles Elon Musk’s DOGE claims, also largely debunked, about large payouts to dead people on Social Security. (Critics portray Musk’s “dead people” claims as part of a strategy to malign Social Security as corrupt, creating a precondition to allow for his “disrupting” it. Musk has called the program a “Ponzi scheme.”)
Fraud does happen in these large federal programs, though the chief concern has been fraud at the institutional level — not by individuals, as Greene’s defense mostly addresses. In 2003 the DOJ settled what it said was the largest health care fraud case in U.S. history with HCA, a company led by future Florida Governor Rick Scott.
[NOTE: The recent projected cuts have caused alarm, as Pelosi attests, but a work requirement on a list of spending cuts circulated among House Republicans in February suggested that a work requirement would slash $120 billion from Medicaid over the next 10 years. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that, if the work requirement passes, “36 million Medicaid enrollees — including people in every state — could be at risk of losing their coverage under various proposals.”]