Deep cuts on safety net loom
Trump budget shows ‘unimaginable’ cruelty: Clinton
WASHINGTON, May 24: Candidate Donald Trump promised to improve healthcare, but as president his first full budget calls for deep cuts to popular insurance programs. And it omits any proposal for negotiating prescription drug prices, a Trump talking point.
While not addressing Medicare’s long term financial problems, the budget targets the much smaller Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. And Trump’s Medicaid cuts appear even bigger than those in the healthcare bill recently passed by House Republicans, above what would be needed to fulfill the GOP vow to repeal “Obamacare.”
Both safety net programs are federal-state collaborations, and such cuts would leave states with hard choices: spend more of their own money; restrict enrollment; cut benefits, or reduce payments to hospitals and doctors.
“If states get fewer dollars from the federal government, there are only so many options, because states have to balance the budget every year,” said Elizabeth Carpenter, a health policy expert with the consulting firm Avalare Health.
Trump’s budget was silent on bargaining with the pharmaceutical industry to reduce the cost of prescription drugs, a topic the president has often touched on. But the budget repeated Trump’s previous proposals for double-digit percentage cuts to the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, considered nonstarters even by Republican lawmakers.
The trillion-dollar-plus Department of Health and Human Services, whose programs cover more than 130 million people, did not hold its customary budget briefing on Tuesday. From Europe where he is attending a world health conference, HHS Secretary Tom Price released a statement that said the budget “outlines a clear path toward fiscal responsibility by creating efficiencies that both improve services and save money.”
As a candidate and as president Trump has frequently talked about making healthcare more affordable for regular folks, including by lowering premiums and deductibles. He promised not to cut Medicare, and initially, Medicaid as well. But to some experts, Trump’s budget looks more like a cost shift from the federal government to the states and to people now benefiting from coverage expansions in the Obama years.
“I think it will be challenging for states to try to figure out what to do,” said Trish Riley, executive director of the nonpartisan National Academy for State Health Policy, which advises states.
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NEW YORK: Hillary Clinton proclaimed Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s budget shows an “unimaginable level of cruelty” for millions of Americans and children.
The former Democratic presidential nominee, who recently declared herself part of the Trump resistance, lashed out at the Republican president’s spending plan in aggressive terms after being honored in New York City by the Children’s Health Fund, a nonprofit organization that helps provide healthcare to poor and homeless children.
“This administration and Republicans in Congress are mounting an onslaught against the needs of children and people with disabilities, women and seniors,” Clinton charged.
She said the budget, which was released earlier in the day, “shows an unimaginable level of cruelty and lack of imagination and disdain for the struggles of millions of Americans, including millions of children.”