The Pennsylvania delegation in the U.S. House voted along party lines this week to narrowly pass a GOP budget blueprint that calls for $2 trillion in spending cuts, including reductions at the federal agency that oversees Medicaid and Medicare.
The budget resolution approved by the U.S. House on Tuesday does not name Medicaid or Medicare specifically, but it does call for $880 billion in spending cuts from the agency that oversees the insurance programs, the House Energy and Commerce Committee. And lawmakers would be hard pressed to cut enough elsewhere to meet that target without impacting Medicare or Medicaid.
An analysis by the New York Times found that if the committee cuts funding to everything other than health care programs, it would still be $600 billion short of the $880 billion target.
“The money is not there,” said Kati Brillhart, vice president of government and external affairs at Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children. “There are not enough programs that they could shave off a bit of funding from and then only impact Medicaid very slightly.”