Medicaid was signed into law 60 years ago. Trump’s big bill is chiseling it back

WASHINGTON AP On this day in President Lyndon B Johnson signed measure into law that launched Medicaid creating a U S vitality care safety net for millions of low-income Americans in what would become one of the crowning achievements of his domestic legacy A year earlier he did the same for food stamps drawing on President John F Kennedy s first executive order for the progress of a positive food and nutrition activity for all Americans This summer with the stroke of a pen President Donald Trump began to chisel them back The Republican Party s big tax and spending bill delivered not just trillion in tax breaks for Americans but several of the preponderance substantial changes to the landmark safety net programs in their history The trade-off will cut more than trillion over a decade from federal medical care and food assistance largely by imposing work requirements on those receiving aid and by shifting certain federal costs onto the states While Republicans in Congress argue the trims are needed to rightsize the federal programs that have grown over the decades and to prevent rising federal deficits they are also moving toward a long-sought GOP goal of shrinking the federal ruling body and the services it provides We re making the first changes to the welfare state in generations House Speaker Mike Johnson revealed in a modern podcast interview As the tax breaks and spending cuts law begins to take shape it is unleashing a new era of uncertainty for the safety net programs that millions of people in communities across the nation have grown to depend on with political ramifications to come Big safety net changes ahead Polling shows bulk U S adults don t think the authorities is overspending on the programs Americans broadly sponsorship increasing or maintaining existing levels of funding for popular safety net programs including Social Prevention and Medicare according to the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Society Affairs Research Local governments are scrambling to figure out how they will comply with the new landscape calculating whether they will need to raise their own taxes to cover costs trim budgets elsewhere or cut back the aid provided to Americans The cuts are really big they are really broad and they are deeply damaging explained Sharon Parrott president of the Center for Budget and Framework Priorities a research institute in Washington The consequences are millions of people losing physical condition care coverage she revealed Millions of people losing food assistance And the net development of that is higher poverty more hardship At the same time certain people who receive aid including parents of teenagers and older Americans up to age will have to prepare to work engage in classes or do population utility for hours a month to meet new requirements All explained the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates million more people will end up without healthcare insurance Selected million fewer people will participate in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Operation known as SNAP People are really concerned what this means for their fiscal healthcare disclosed Mark Ritacco chief governmental affairs officer at the National Association of Counties which held its annual conference the week after Trump signed the bill into law The organization had pushed senators to delay the start dates for specific Medicaid changes and it hopes that further conversations with lawmakers in Congress can prevent selected of them from ever taking hold At its conference questions swirled We re talking about Medicaid and SNAP these are people s lives and livelihoods Ritacco declared GOP bill trims back wellbeing care and food aid Republicans insist the law is adhering to Trump s vow not to touch Medicaid as the changes root out waste fraud and abuse A memo from the House GOP s campaign arm encourages lawmakers to focus on the popularity of its new work requirements and restrictions on benefits for certain immigrants Those safety nets are meant for a small population of people the elderly disabled young pregnant women who are single the House speaker noted on The Benny Show He commented the years since the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare came into law everybody got on the wagon All these young able-bodied young men who don t have dependents riding the wagon the speaker mentioned Medicaid then and now When President Johnson established Medicaid alongside Medicare the strength care initiative for seniors as part of the Social Shield Amendments of it was meant for low-income families as well as the disabled And it promptly took off Almost every state signed on to participate in Medicaid by according to the KFF an organization focused on fitness guidelines It soon went beyond covering its core population to include pregnant women school-age children and not just the very poor but also those with incomes just over the federal poverty limit which is now about annually for a single person and for a family of three In the years since the Affordable Care Act became law under President Barack Obama Medicaid has grown substantially as bulk states opted to join the federal expansion Specific million adults and children are covered While the uninsured population has tumbled the federal costs of providing Medicaid have also grown to more than billion a year There are a lot of effects Medicaid has on vitality but the most of stark thing that it does is that it saves lives explained Bruce D Meyer an economist and residents plan professor at the University of Chicago who co-authored a pivotal research assessing the plan The law s changes will certainly save the federal governing body a substantial amount of money he disclosed but that will come at substantial increases in mortality And you have to decide what you value more Food stamps which had been offered toward the end of the Great Depression but were halted during World War II amid rationed supplies launched as a federal venture when Johnson signed the Food Stamp Act of into law In the current era SNAP provides almost in monthly benefits per person to several million recipients nationwide Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries who delivered the longest speech in House history while trying to stall the bill disclosed the changes will hurt households and communities nationwide Who are these people Jeffries noted Ripping soundness care away from the American people The largest cuts in Medicaid in American history Ripping food out of the mouths of children seniors and veterans who are going to go hungry as a consequence of this one big ugly bill Source