A statement by Dustin Pugel of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy
The new House budget and tax plan would kick many thousands of Kentuckians off their health insurance and take food assistance away from families in an effort to offset a small portion of the cost of cutting taxes for the wealthy. If passed, this would be the largest funding cut to both Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in history.
More than one in three Kentuckians relies on Medicaid, but the new House plan includes
- Onerous work reporting requirements that would result in terminated health coverage for those caught up in new red tape;
- Mandatory co-payments that would delay or prevent people from getting needed care;
- More frequent checks for eligibility leading to more needless coverage-ending mistakes;
- And other significant changes aimed at taking coverage from people on Medicaid.
In total, these policies would cut the program by over $700 billion over 10 years and leave 8.6 million more Americans uninsured.
SNAP, meanwhile, helps more than 575,800 Kentuckians with their food budgets and resulted in almost $1.3 billion spent on groceries at more than 4,700 Kentucky food retailers in 2024. But the House plan increases red-tape requirements that will kick older people and parents off the program, putting at risk over 100,000 Kentuckians. And it calls to shrink SNAP by shifting costs to the states, which may be unable or unwilling to cover them, especially in hard economic times when SNAP eligibility goes up.
The House plan includes many other concerning provisions, including those that would raise the cost of attending college and further target our undocumented neighbors. And it is all being done to partially offset the costs of extending key parts of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy.
As a state where more than a million people rely on these vital federal programs, Kentucky would be left sicker, hungrier, and poorer by these cruel and unnecessary changes. And this proposal threatens to weaken Kentucky’s economy by taking dollars out of rural hospitals and grocery stores to give to millionaires who mostly live elsewhere and whose wealth never trickles down to us. We need our Congressional representatives to look out for their fellow Kentuckians rather than pursue this draconian plan.
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