Medicaid cuts could leave hundreds of thousands of women unemployed

The House-approved budget calls for deep cuts that could reduce Medicaid funding by $880 billion over 10 years.

What you probably already know: House Republicans passed a budget resolution in February authorizing $4.5 trillion in tax cuts through 2034. To partially offset the cost, the budget tasks committees with finding $2 trillion in spending reductions — $880 billion of which will be up to the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid and Medicare. Republicans ruled out changes to Medicare, which accounts for approximately 15% of the federal budget. Since Medicaid accounts for 93% of the remaining funding, it logically stands to bear the brunt of potential cuts. Such deep cuts to Medicaid assistance would lead to sweeping job losses within the health care sector, particularly among women.

Why? A new report from The Commonwealth Fund found that Medicaid cuts would lead to the loss of 477,000 health care jobs nationwide in 2026. Eight in 10 health care workers were women in 2022. Men still account for the majority of physicians, but women are steadily catching up, increasing from 37.6% in 2022 to just over 38% in 2023. The 72 million mostly low-income Americans who are covered by Medicaid, including nearly 40% of all children and most nursing home residents, will also be impacted. One in 10 Medicaid beneficiaries is living with a disability. The program also covers 41% of births in the U.S. and provides prenatal and postpartum care.

What it means: The report shows that the impact on state economies would be greater than the loss of federal Medicaid funding, with their collective gross domestic products falling by $95 billion and $157 billion in total lost economic output. This shakes out to about $1.9 billion in GDP reduction for an average state in 2026. Cuts to the health care sector would impact everything from hospitals to nursing homes, leaving fewer workers available to provide care. Rural facilities would likely close, leaving countless people who are still insured without access to care — not to mention those who would no longer have Medicaid insurance. This comes at a time when hundreds of rural hospitals are already at risk of closing as private insurers fail to pay the full cost of patient care, maternity wards are going dark, and disease rates continue to bloat in regions like the so-called “Stroke Belt” where a large number of hospitals have shuttered. 

What happens now? President Trump had previously vowed to leave Medicaid alone. “Medicare, Medicaid — none of that stuff is going to be touched,” he said in a Fox News interview in February (before the budget bill’s passing). “We won’t have to.” But during his first term, he supported a plan to rollback Obamacare and permanently change Medicaid, which would have slashed around $800 billion from the program. This week, the Department of Health and Human Services said it will cut 10,000 full-time employees across health agencies, including 300 workers at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.