Reno Gazette Journal: 312,000 Nevadans would lose health care if Medicaid cuts are enacted for Trump budget
- Feb 24
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 19
Reno Gazette Journal
A U.S. House budget plan puts Medicaid in the crosshairs for cuts to pay for President Donald Trump’s agenda.
If that happens, Nevada would have to come up with $6.7 billion or else throw hundreds of thousands of Silver State residents off their health insurance, according to an analysis by KFF, a nonpartisan health policy organization.
More than 700,000 Nevadans are enrolled in Medicaid, a health insurance program aimed at people who are poor or disabled. It’s a partnership between states and the federal government.
In Nevada, Medicaid covers 42% of births and 60% of nursing home residents.
In other words, cuts to Medicaid would create big changes to health coverage for many in Nevada — and those changes would largely become the state’s responsibility.
How likely are Medicaid cuts?
In an interview this week on Fox News, President Trump said of budget plans, “Medicare, Medicaid — none of that stuff is going to be touched.”
That would seem to end the discussion.
But according to Republicans themselves, the U.S. House budget plan makes Medicaid cuts almost a necessity in order to achieve Trump’s overall fiscal goals.
The House — which oversees federal spending — put forward a budget blueprint that calls for $2 trillion in spending cuts. It directs the Energy and Commerce Committee to come up with $880 billion of those cuts.
The main program this committee oversees that has a budget large enough to accomplish nearly a trillion dollars in cuts is Medicaid.
Some Republican House members acknowledge this reality. Eight sent a letter last week to House Speaker Mike Johnson noting that “Medicaid is expected to bear the brunt of these reductions.”
Senate Republicans pushed through their own budget blueprint on party lines in the wee hours Friday.
It prompted Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Democrat, to say in a statement, “Senate Republicans just pushed through a budget resolution in the dead of night that will cut critical programs like Medicaid and SNAP to pay for more tax giveaways for the ultra-wealthy and big corporations.”
The Senate plan does not actually explain how its tax cuts and spending programs will be paid for.
“I’ll oppose any attempt to target programs that families rely on,” Rosen said. “That is why I voted against this partisan resolution.”
How Nevada would be affected by Medicaid cuts
State Medicaid programs rely on federal matches to supplement the money they allocate for their Medicaid recipients.
It's known as Medicaid expansion, and it's part of the Affordable Care Act, also called Obamacare. States receive large matching funds — 90% — to cover their residents who struggle to afford health care coverage.
Not all states joined the Medicaid expansion program, but Nevada did. In fact, it was the first state with a Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, to sign on.
If federal dollars for matching funds went away and Nevada picked up the cost for covering its residents on Medicaid, it would cost the state $6.7 billion, the KFF analysis estimates. That’s about a half-billion dollars more than Nevada’s entire budget.
If the federal money went away and Nevada decided not to cover the cost, KFF estimates that about 312,000 people in the state would lose their Medicaid health coverage.
That would be a 42% drop in enrollment — the third highest amount in the nation, according to the KFF analysis. Only Virginia with a 45% drop and Oregon with a 49% drop would be higher.
Whether Medicaid cuts will actually fund President Trump's agenda is still up in the air.
What is certain, though, is that Nevada's governor and the Legislature are keeping a close eye on what will happen, waiting to see if the state's budget gets blown up.
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