Republicans love their boogeymen; the grotesquely exaggerated villains they use to justify their worst policy ideas. President Trump loves to parade his favorite boogeymen: the “criminal aliens,” the dishonest media, the Democrats, and so on. These dehumanizing caricatures help him rile up his base and lead them to back his cruelest initiatives.
As the GOP-controlled Congress argues the merits of the cuts included in Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” act — which is deeply unpopular with voters — they’re discovering new boogeymen to deflect criticism.
Republicans are very defensive about their $1 trillion cut in Medicaid, which will deprive almost 12 million, mostly low-income and working-class Americans, of their health care coverage.
So with the aid of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Oz, they’ve conjured up a new boogeyman: “able-bodied working-age Americans without dependents.” The emblematic figure here is a “25-year-old living in the basement.”
There’s just one problem: In 2024, able-bodied adults who qualified for Medicaid (i.e., adults between the ages of 18-64 who make approximately $21,597/year or less) mostly voted for Donald Trump.
In 2024, Trump won the majority of voters who made less than $50,000 and was up 14 points with men between the ages of 19 and 29, and even expanded his margin with men under 50 compared to 2020. To add to this, Trump also won over two-thirds of voters in rural areas where 1 in 4 people are Medicaid recipients.
In other words, Republicans are making boogeymen of their own voters. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) seems to be one of the few congressional Republicans to grasp this point.
He says that “slashing health insurance for the working poor… is both morally wrong and politically suicidal,” while noting that MAGA voters never signed up for Medicaid cuts. In fact, in Hawley’s home state of Missouri, voters elected Trump as president and expanded eligibility for Medicaid on the very same ballot.
President Trump has repeatedly promised his voters, “We’re not cutting Medicaid,” and he would veto a bill that would do that. The White House website repeats the claim that there will be no cuts to Medicaid, just the surgical elimination of waste, fraud and abuse.
However, many nonpartisan groups, including the Congressional Budget Office, the National Patient Advocate Foundation and groups that focus on specific diseases, say the GOP Medicare cuts will do collateral damage to recipients who are eligible and already working, as well as all Americans, when rural hospitals close and health care costs increase.
Almost two-thirds of Americans view the law unfavorably, including many Republicans. When informed that the bill would increase the uninsured rate and decrease hospital funding, half of self-identified MAGA voters didn’t support the bill.
When the public is informed that most people on Medicaid already meet the work requirement, but the paperwork connected to it would cause people to lose their insurance, only about one-third of people support work requirements in Medicaid.
In addition, as Republicans attempt to hobble Medicaid, public support continues to grow for the program, increasing by six percentage points since January to 83 percent.
Congressional Republicans don’t seem to care that Medicaid covers our most vulnerable citizens, who can’t just tap their bank accounts when they get sick or have an accident. Americans deserve to have a backup as they recover from job loss, as they care for their loved ones, and while they educate themselves.
Medicaid is there because having fewer people uninsured helps stabilize other parts of the health care system, like rural facilities and the cost for all health care users. This was also once the belief of Vice President JD Vance, too.
As for what congressional Republicans believe, it is unclear. It took less than a year for them to forget who voted them into power and go back to their usual “tax breaks for the rich, shame on the working poor” stance.
Their law, which manages to be spendthrift and stingy at the same time, is most assuredly cutting Medicaid, no matter how much Trump tries to gaslight us into thinking otherwise. These cuts are cruel and, as Hawley predicts, will likely prove hazardous to the Republicans’ political health in the midterm elections.
Alix Ware is the director of Health Care Policy at the Progressive Policy Institute.
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