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Schumer vows to keep Medicaid off the chopping block in debt ceiling fight [1]

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Date: 2023-02-17  

Enter Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who told Huffpost this week the Senate Democrats will not bargain it away, to any extent, in the standoff over the debt limit.

“It’s a very popular program and we will defend it. We don’t think any cuts on Medicaid, just like cuts on Medicare and Social Security, should be attached to debt ceiling brinksmanship,” Schumer said in a Wednesday press conference.

That’s the first explicit promise from Democratic leadership on Medicaid specifically, though the Biden administration has been aggressive in expanding the program. His COVID-19 relief package brought millions into the program, and he expanded and extended coverage for new populations, including extending care for new mothers. But he also started looking at Medicaid more holistically, in how it could help with food and housing services to keep people healthy.

The administration started approving state requests for waivers that would also allow Medicaid enrollees to pay for groceries and nutritional counseling. Arkansas, Massachusetts, and Oregon recently received approval from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) last year to use a portion of their Medicaid funds to pay for food programs. That could include providing medically designed meal programs, short term food assistance with a focus on healthy foods, nutrition and cooking classes, and plain old food security.

Biden has also continued to work to convince the last holdout Republican states that haven’t accepted Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act to just finally do it. “Over 1.1 million people in Florida would be eligible for Medicaid if Governor DeSantis just said I agree to expand it. This isn’t calculus,” Biden said last week when he in was in Florida. “The only reason that [Medicaid] expansion hasn’t happened here is because of politics,” he said. “It’s time to get this done.”

His commitment to the program seems clear, and the endorsement it just got from Schumer is encouraging. Because it’s not just going to be a fight to keep the GOP’s grubby mitts off of it in this budget fight: It’s going to be a fight to make sure Medicaid can keep covering the needs of the millions of people who need it.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/17/2153391/-Schumer-vows-to-keep-Medicaid-off-the-chopping-block-in-debt-ceiling-fight

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