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Dear Congressman: Your rationale for Medicaid cuts doesn't make sense [1]
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Date: 2025-03-25
Below is a letter I sent to my congressional representative (NC-7). I will let DailyKOS know if I get a response. (I had written to him deploring the cuts and a response which I excerpt below.)
Dear Mr. Rouzer,
On March 23, I received a letter from you seeking to justify large cuts to the Medicaid budget. The letter said, in part:
“The truth is we want to strengthen Medicaid by eliminating the almost $81 billion annually in waste, fraud, and abuse as identified by the General Accounting Office.”
The letter continued with the following: “In fiscal year 2022, [the GAO reported to Congress that] Medicaid improper payments were estimated to total nearly $81 billion, representing over 15 percent of all Medicaid payments.”
On a superficial level, the budget cuts you propose seem logical. There was an estimated $81 billion dollars in improper payments, so we’ll cut the Medicaid budget by $81 billion.
It is easy, however, to see the fallacy. I can explain using an analogy. Suppose I have a 10-pound tumor in my body. I clearly want my surgeon to remove the 10-pound tumor. But I want him to use a scalpel. I don’t want him to use a chain saw. I don’t want my doctor to remove any old 10-pound part of my body with a chain saw.
Recently, cuts to the federal budget have been made, not with a scalpel, but with a chain saw. In fact, I would argue that the cuts have been made not with a chain saw but with a wrecking ball.
My question to you is: What procedures are being put into place to ensure that those who SHOULD be allowed to use Medicaid will still be allowed to use Medicaid? What procedures are being put in place to ensure that only “improper payments” are avoided and not proper payments?
Perhaps more investigators need to be hired to root out the improper payments. This might cost more in the short term, but could save money in the long term. Perhaps penalties for Medicaid fraud need to be stiffened. I can easily support both approaches.
I cannot accept that the steep cuts to the Medicaid budget will not hurt innocent people unless you can provide convincing answers to the above questions.
I look forward to your answer.
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