The House Republican proposal to overhaul Medicare was the issue that took center stage in Tuesday’s upset victory by a Democrat in a special election contest to fill an open congressional seat in a staunchly GOP district. That came against a backdrop of polls and angry town hall meetings showing strong opposition to changes in Medicare that has put Republicans on the defensive.
But the Republicans have also proposed big changes for Medicaid which are unpopular.
House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s plan would convert Medicaid — the increasingly costly program to aid uninsured low-income individuals and families — from an open-ended entitlement program to one that gives a lump sum of block grants to the states and let them determine levels of coverage and who is eligible. Ryan hopes the change would save $700 billion over the next decade; critics say that cash-strapped states would be forced to sharply scale back the program.
A new Kaiser Family Foundation health tracking poll conducted May 12-17 found that 60 percent of those surveyed want to keep Medicaid as-is compared to 35 percent who support the block grant approach, with 4 percent expressing no opinion.
Seventy-nine percent of Democrats favored keeping Medicaid as-is, a view shared by 60 percent of independents. Republicans favored changing the program as Ryan has suggested by a 57 percent to 39 percent margin.
Some of those who hold the pro or con view on the block grant approach are open to argument. When those who wanted to keep the program as-is were presented with the argument of block grant proponents that it would reduce the federal deficit and give states the flexibility to match their residents’ needs and protect the states’ budgets, the percentage of those who wanted to keep the program as-is dropped to 49 percent compared to 44 percent who backed the change.
On the flip side, those who initially said they supported the Medicaid overhaul were presented with the opponents’ argument that doing so would “increase the number of uninsured, increase financial pressure on states and health care providers, and cause more low-income people to go without health care and long‐term care services, particularly during tough economic times.” When asked their opinion in light of that, 69 percent favored keeping the program as-is while 25 percent still supported change.