Edwin Park

And the over $1 trillion dollar cut to Medicaid will absolutely undermine even this relatively good labor market.

While employment in health care shrank this month, it continues to account for more than all of the jobs created over the past year.

NEW DATA: Americans in the battleground blame Republicans policies - like tariffs and Medicaid cuts - for their rising costs.

Read more in our latest report: https://navigatorresearch.org/tariffs-tax-cuts-trouble-for-republicans

Lawmakers Knew All Along They Were Voting to Cut Medicaid for Older Adults - Justice in Aging The battle to protect Medicaid for older adults and people with disabilities now moves to state capitals — where care hangs in the balance.

Congress promised to protect Medicaid, then voted to slash funding by $1 trillion.

Home care services—the lifeline that keeps many older adults out of nursing homes—now hang in the balance.

First Trump Admin targeted Minnesota and is trying to block billions in federal funding from the state’s #Medicaid program. Then it similarly weaponized claims of Medicaid fraud against California and Maine. Now it is going after New York. There seems to be a pattern but what could it be…

Despite severe cost-shifts under H.R. 1's #Medicaid and SNAP cuts, GOP policymakers in a number of states are still pursuing further massive tax cuts. They should instead be identifying additional revenues to mitigate inevitable budget cuts slashing health, nutrition, and education due to H.R. 1.

Federal Government’s Attacks on Medicaid Are a Pretext to Weaken the Program and Punish Particular States Since the beginning of the year, the Trump Administration has been threatening funding for various programs that help people meet their basic needs, using the pretext of fighting fraud, waste, and...

The Trump Administration’s actions to take Medicaid funding away from states is a strategy to weaponize claims of fraud and ultimately take health care from people who can least afford it — putting their ability to meet their basic needs at risk: www.cbpp.org/blog/federal...

And ICYMI here is the latest blog by my veteran Medicaid expert colleague Andy Schneider on what is happening with the actions against Minnesota.
Hint: They are unprecedented.
ccf.georgetown.edu/2026/03/02/c...

CMS Weaponizes Fraud Against Medicaid in Minnesota: Part 2 At a White House press conference last Wednesday, Vice President J.D. Vance, newly tasked with leading a war on fraud, announced that “we have decided to temporarily halt” $259 million in federal matc...

And here again is my colleague Andy Schneider's blog on CMS's deferral of #Medicaid funding in Minnesota: ccf.georgetown.edu/2026/03/02/c...

Minnesota sues Trump Administration over CMS's unprecedented, punitive action to block the state's federal #Medicaid funding through a "deferral" which was announced last week: www.ag.state.mn.us/Office/Commu...

CMS Weaponizes Fraud Against Medicaid in Minnesota: Part 2 At a White House press conference last Wednesday, Vice President J.D. Vance, newly tasked with leading a war on fraud, announced that “we have decided to temporarily halt” $259 million in federal matc...

As promised my colleague Andy Schneider with a *must read* blog taking a deep dive into the Trump Admin's latest unprecedented effort to block federal #Medicaid funding in order to punish Minnesota. A few key takeaways to follow (1/x): ccf.georgetown.edu/2026/03/02/c...

Idaho considers an 'apocalyptic' choice for disabled people and families Difficult budget decisions in a number of states are threatening vital programs for disabled people at home and caregivers in the workforce.

States have started proposing steep reductions in disability services to cope with Medicaid cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Idaho is the first to suggest scrapping home care altogether — An action with a high human cost. My latest @19thnews.org.

Ultimately the Trump Admin likely doesn't care if they eventually lose as part of the administrative appeals process or in litigation if they have managed to inflict harm on certain states and their #Medicaid programs in the immediate term (7/x)

That is clearly the goal: to use these #Medicaid oversight tools in unprecedented, dubious ways to punish Minnesota (and also pave the way for doing the same to other politically disfavored states). It's consistent with the Trump Admin's attempts to block funding elsewhere, like for child care (6/x)

In the interim, MN's will be under intense fiscal pressure to make up for all of this lost federal #Medicaid funding with state funds. That will not be sustainable beyond a short period if some or all of this federal funding is actually blocked through either deferrals or withholds (5/x)

So combined more than one-quarter of MN's federal #Medicaid funding is in the process of being blocked. While MN has legal recourse through a complex admin appeals process (and eventually through the courts), that will take a lot of time. (4/x)

That's on top of CMS continuing effort, announced in January and still moving forward, to block federal #Medicaid funding for MN through a different "withholding" process that likely has never been used and certainly not in this way and of this magnitude - roughly 18% of MN's federal $ (3/x)

CMS is now trying to withhold roughly 9% of MN's #Medicaid funding through an unprecedented use of a "deferral" process. But while deferrals have been used sometimes in the past, the amounts held back are very modest: no more than 1% and usually much much smaller than that (2/x)

CMS Weaponizes Fraud Against Medicaid in Minnesota: Part 2 At a White House press conference last Wednesday, Vice President J.D. Vance, newly tasked with leading a war on fraud, announced that “we have decided to temporarily halt” $259 million in federal matc...

As promised my colleague Andy Schneider with a *must read* blog taking a deep dive into the Trump Admin's latest unprecedented effort to block federal #Medicaid funding in order to punish Minnesota. A few key takeaways to follow (1/x): ccf.georgetown.edu/2026/03/02/c...

The image contains three line graphs labeled A, B, and C, each depicting trends related to "Change in pharmacies per 10000 residents" over time relative to Medicaid expansion. Graph B shows a notable increase after year 0.

Medicaid expansion was associated with a 5.7% increase in pharmacy availability over 5 years in zip code areas with highest adult uninsurance rates, compared to a 7.4% decrease in nonexpansion areas.

ja.ma/4rYfLZj

It's all a part of OMB Director Russ Vought playbook.

He has called this apportionment process an “indispensable statutory tool” to force agencies to adhere to White House priorities — even arguing that the OMB can legally provide less funding than Congress explicitly appropriated.

The image is a line graph from KFF titled "The Medicaid Payment Error Rate Measurement (PERM) Program Finds that Medicaid Pays Most Outlays Properly." It displays a comparison of Medicaid overall improper payment rate estimates, showing two lines: "Proper payments" in blue and "Improper payments" in green. The graph covers the years 2009 to 2025 on the x-axis, with a percentage scale from 0% to 100% on the y-axis. A note at the bottom clarifies that "improper payments" are not indicative of fraud.

Federal audits show most Medicaid payments (94% in 2025) meet requirements and that most improper payments are due to insufficient documentation.

More on Medicaid payment errors as well as upcoming changes and impacts: https://on.kff.org/3MAirwJ

The most likely case is that CMS knows it won't be ultimately successful in disallowing federal $ as part of the admin process but deferring or withholding $ upfront puts huge fiscal, punitive pressures on MN in the interim.

Key question is whether CMS complies with all admin process requirements and tries to prove in admin hearings its dubious claims there's all this unallowable spending in MN (and eventually in litigation). Or it may option to just impounding funding unlawfully like with other spending.

And a reminder that the Trump Admin appears to still be pursuing another process to withhold #Medicaid $ from MN it initiated in January, which is also punitive and unprecedented, and would throw its budget into chaos by blocking a significant share of its federal Medicaid funding (2/2)

There's a little more clarity about the authority the Trump Admin is citing to allow it to withhold federal #Medicaid funding from Minnesota. My colleague Andy Schneider has a forthcoming blog explaining this "deferral" authority but how it is being weaponized against MN in unprecedented ways (1/2)

New A.C.A. Plans Could Increase Family Deductibles to $31,000

The “affordability” pivot we’ve all been waiting for: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/h...

Attack on MN is an effort to distract voters from the fact that Trump Administration and their allies in Congress made the largest cuts to Medicaid in history -- almost $1 trillion which will result in an estimated 7.5 million people becoming uninsured according to CBO.
www.cbo.gov/publication/...

leaving this here for other folks who may have missed it

The damage is magnitudes greater than the RHTP funds can ever address- to say nothing of the programmatic caps on allocating funds to cover healthcare delivery