Trump Isn’t Done Cutting Your Health Care

(Composite / Photos: Shutterstock, Wikimedia Commons)

THE LEGISLATION DONALD TRUMP SIGNED earlier this month was the largest cut to safety-net programs in U.S. history, and is projected to leave nearly 12 million Americans without health insurance.

Evidently that’s not enough for either him or some of his allies.

Earlier this week, House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Tex.) told Bloomberg News that he hopes Republicans can use their next big legislative vehicle, the fall budget bill due by the end of September, to pass some of the Medicaid cuts he had hoped to include the first time around.

That includes GOP proposals to reduce Washington’s share of funding for the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion—the extra money states get in exchange for opening up their programs to anybody with income below or just above the poverty line.

If that money goes away, a bunch of states are likely to scale back Medicaid eligibility, either because their lawmakers would vote to do so or because the laws they passed authorizing expansion call for automatic cancellation if the feds dial back their contribution.

In either case, the number of Americans who would become newly uninsured would probably reach into the millions. That would be above and beyond the millions set to lose coverage already.

Arrington’s wishing for this to happen won’t make it so, any more than it did when he and some other congressional Republicans tried it a few weeks ago. They couldn’t get majority support for that cut then, so maybe they won’t get majority support next time.

But the Trump administration doesn’t have to rely on legislation to downsize Medicaid. It can use its regulatory authority. This week, it did just that.