Medicaid (and Medicare?) on hot seat this week
Republican lawmakers try to enact their spending cuts without touching the big Ms--all for a tax cut you have to make at least $336K to enjoy. See below to make that seat hotter for them to do it.
(March 15, 2025: Includes corrected data on annual income for those who will benefit most from the proposed extension of Trump’s tax cut.)
As women, when healthcare falls apart, we’re the ones who have to manage parents, kids, and those we guide and love in our communities. Here’s where we are today on potential $1T in cuts to Medicaid and/or Medicare and the SNAP food assistance program. If Medicaid takes the hit because even Congress is afraid to mess with seniors, that would be an 11% cut to Medicaid plus a 22% cut to SNAP.
March 15 is the drop-dead date for Congress to figure this out or shut us all down. I’ve run a couple companies; management by chaos is not something they teach at Harvard. Here’s more on the divisions showing up in Congress and elsewhere.
See our prior posts on this issue for more background, and see more below on why the tax cut won’t do you much good unless you make at least $336K/year.
If this concerns you
Contact your Representative; it’s the House that’s targeting $880 B in cuts to Medicaid and/or Medicare, with another $100+ billion in cuts to SNAP.
Definitely contact your Senator; they’re not as enthusiastic about cuts to healthcare programs. They’ve seen that movie, and the party that does it gets voted out in the next cycle.
Why do I need to make at least $336,000/year to benefit from that tax cut?
As was the case after the first tax cut, the top 5% of Americans will again get nearly half the benefit—something people have started to feel even if they haven’t seen the actual data. To be in that top 5%, you need to have made at least $336K/year in 2023.
Of our US population of about 340M, about 17 million Americans are in that income bracket. If you’re not in that 5%, well, you’ll split whatever is left with 323 million of the rest of Americans. Not everyone loves that, particularly the bottom 50% of the population making $15,000 to $75,000/year.
And if you’re wondering when all this happened, here’s Federal Reserve data for the timeline.