Trump's Trials - Democrats sound alarm over GOP Medicaid proposal they say could affect millions

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky explains why he and other Democrats are sounding the alarm over a Republican Medicaid proposal they say will leave millions of people without health care.Support NPR and hear every episode of Trump's Terms sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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Michelle Martin I'm Michelle Martin. The country's Democratic governors are sounding the alarm over a Republican plan that they say would leave millions of people without access to health care. A bill drafted by House Republicans calls for hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts and steps to make it harder to enroll in or stay in Medicaid, Medicaid being the program that provides health coverage for low and middle income households. All 23 Democratic governors have signed a statement saying the cuts will be disastrous. Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky is one of the people who signed the letter and he's with us on the line now. Good morning Governor. Good morning. So what are your biggest concerns should

this bill become law? How do you see it playing out in your state? Like what are your top three worries? My biggest concerns are that people who need health care coverage are going to lose it. Medicaid covers the people we love the most, our parents, and our kids. Half of Kentucky's kids are covered by Medicaid, and 70% of our long term care costs are covered by Medicaid. And so when the analysis that is coming out about this bill shows that millions of people will lose their health care.

One set of analysis set up to 8.5 million, that's almost double the entire population of my state. It means that kids will lose health care. It means that seniors will lose health care. And what that means is that families will struggle to make up those dollars and to make up that care. Medicaid is something that also drives and fuels rural healthcare.

And if you remove coverage for millions of people, you remove significant revenue going into those hospital systems. So what we'll see are layoffs, we will see closures, and we'll see folks that live in rural America having to drive hours just to see a doctor. And then finally, the cuts to SNAP are just mean and cruel. My faith teaches me that there should be enough food for everyone.

The miracle of the fishes and the loaves is in every single book of the gospel and in a country where we grow enough food for all of our people. A program like SNAP just makes sure that we don't have hungry kids, that we don't have hungry families, and that ultimately everybody has the basic food that they need to get healthy and to get into that workforce. Okay. So Republicans argue two things. One is that there's a lot of fraud and waste in Medicaid and the second is that the program has expanded beyond what it was intended for and if you address those things, it'll preserve the program for the people who really need it. What do you say to that? If you're worried that there's fraud and abuse there are units

that are already out there that are going after bad providers. I ran one of them. Just about every Attorney's General Office has one and if you want to fair it out fraud better fund those units and you will get those results. But what this plan tries to do is to add burdens to those that are on Medicaid, to fill out forms more often, to check the right box, to create just more challenges so that someone will not fill out something correctly and they'll lose coverage for a certain period of time. It's what I'm also concerned that this administration is trying to do on social Security by shutting down offices and shutting down

the call center and making those on a fixed income drive an hour or two to show up to an office and did not have the right forms. You know this is an effort just to make it harder for people who already qualify to get the health care that they need. So there are some people within the Republican Party who wanted more aggressive cuts to Medicaid, who think these cuts don't go far enough, and things that they wanted are not in this bill, like, for example, per capita limits on Medicaid spending. So this represents a compromise from their perspective. Are there things that Democrats should be willing to consider in order to address their concerns?

I think you should always be willing to consider a plan that's out there, but the more hard-line Republicans would have almost eliminated, if not fully eliminated, rural health care. You look at rural hospital systems that are the second largest employer in most of the counties that they're in after the public school systems. Many of them have up to 40% of their total revenue in Medicaid, major slashes to Medicaid, even this plan, threaten that rural health care. And I think that rural Americans ought to be able to see a doctor, ought to be able to go to a clinic, ought to be able to see a nurse practitioner in their own communities. And so what I'd say to those hardliners is

go out and talk to the people in your communities. They are not for this. People understand Medicaid in a different way than they did 20 years ago. They realize how important it is to their local economy and to their families. Let me just jump in here. You only have about 30 seconds left. Given the Republican Party's control of both houses of Congress and the White House, is there really anything that Democrats can do beyond issuing statements like the one

that the Democratic governors did to stop this? We can speak up and we can speak out, and so can all of the American people. This is a really bad plan that is going to hurt families. And when you look at anything from polling numbers to what I hear in communities, they are going to react and react negatively to this Republican plan. This is going to react and react negatively to this Republican

plan. This is going to cost Republicans not just in swing districts, but in many districts their seats. And so I hope they don't do it. I hope they don't do it to preserve health care for families. But if it takes electoral pressure, then so be it. That's Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky. He is a Democrat.

Governor, thank you so much for speaking with us. Thank you. Before we wrap up, a reminder, you can find more coverage of the Trump administration on the NPR Politics Podcast, where you can hear NPR's political reporters break down the day's biggest political news with new episodes every weekday afternoon. And thanks, as always, to our NPR Plus supporters who hear every episode of the show without sponsored messages. You can learn more at plus.npr.org.

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