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Medicaid shows its political clout
The fight to protect health care entitlement is driving the Obamacare repeal struggle in the Senate.
Medicaid may be the next “third rail” in American politics. Resistance to cutting the health care program for the poor has emerged as a big stumbling block to Obamacare repeal, and Republicans touch it at their political peril.
“If they’d gone ahead ... clearly I would think we’d be seeing a transfer of power in a year and a half,” said John Weaver, a GOP strategist for Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who has called the Medicaid overhaul proposals of his fellow Republicans “unacceptable.”
The repeal efforts in Congress actually aimed to do more than repeal Obamacare. The House-passed bill, H.R. 1628 (115), and the Senate counterpart that collapsed Monday called for the biggest changes and deepest cuts to Medicaid since its creation as part of the Great Society programs in 1965.
But an overhaul that would cut nearly $800 billion over a decade and have 15 million fewer people covered in Medicaid went too far for moderates like Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and created a backlash from several influential Republican governors.
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