As Republicans hone the details of their plan to strip $880 billion in federal funding from Medicaid and similar programs, the GOP and its allies are launching a concerted effort aimed at obscuring those efforts.
In the past few days, GOP-affiliated organizations have launched two new ad campaigns with the goal of convincing voters that Republicans aren’t doing the very thing that they’re currently doing: trying to cut Medicaid.
On Tuesday, the American Action Network, a conservative issue advocacy group that helps promote Republicans, launched a $7 million ad campaign across 30 congressional districts claiming that reporting on the GOP efforts to defund Medicaid was “misinformation.”
“There’s a lot of misinformation out there trying to scare seniors. Trust me, Congresswoman Jen Kiggans is fighting to protect us. She’s supporting President Trump’s common-sense reforms to root out waste, fraud and abuse, fixing the Biden pill penalty while preserving our benefits,” one TV ad in Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District said.
Another ad by the group attempts to shift the focus from Medicaid to Medicare, a program that is not currently on the chopping block. Medicaid is a joint state and federal health insurance program for low-income households, whereas Medicare is mostly reserved for those age 65 and older. The ad attacks Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, for voting against a GOP continuing resolution that funded the government through September, which most Democrats opposed because it did nothing to check the Trump administration’s impoundment of congressionally-authorized spending. The ad, however, frames this as voting against Medicare.
“I can’t survive without Medicare yet when the time came to protect and fund Medicare, Congresswoman Kaptur voted no. A bipartisan vote and Marcy Kaptur chose to play politics instead of standing up for us,” the narrator states.
The American Action Network’s ads are running across 30 congressional districts, including competitive ones like those represented by Reps. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., and Jared Golden, D-Maine, as well as districts represented by GOP leadership, including Rep. James Comer, R-Ky.
Another conservative group, Plymouth Union Public Advocacy, came in with a $650,000 ad campaign on Wednesday. One ad, set to run across eight states with Republican senators, claims that “President Trump is stepping into the ring, fighting to preserve Medicaid for those who need it most.” The rest of the ad advocates for premium tax credits, a provision of the Affordable Care Act, that enables the federal government to partially subsidize the cost of private health insurance.
Plymouth Union Public Advocacy is a Trump-promoting nonprofit run by the former political director of the Republican Governors Association and other GOP operatives. Because of its non-profit status, it is not required to make the same financial disclosures and other political organizations. The ad campaign is set to run in South Dakota, West Virginia, Louisiana, Maine, Idaho, Utah, Alaska and North Carolina, all states with Republican senators.
“Preserve Medicaid and make premium tax credits work for more families,” the narrator states.
In conjunction with the ad blitz, Republicans have taken to town halls claiming that they won’t cut Medicaid benefits. Some, like Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., have even said on the floor of the House that the GOP budget will “increase Medicaid expenditures by at least 25% over the next 10 years.”
Dean Baker, an economist and co-founder at the Center for Economic Policy Research, told Salon that such promises don’t add up.
“The House passed a budget reconciliation bill that called on the Energy and Commerce Committee to cut $880 billion over the next decade from the programs it oversees. If they exclude Medicaid, the other programs’ baseline spending would not be $880 billion over the decade,” Baker said. “That means that if they would hit this target, they would need to cut Medicaid even if they zeroed out everything else in the programs they oversee.”
The deluge of messaging comes as the GOP is zeroing in on how specifically they are planning to cut Medicaid and other programs. The American Prospect reported this week that Republicans are circulating a menu of options, including work requirements and a plan to increase out-of-pocket expenses for recipients working at or above the federal poverty line.
Meanwhile, Politico reported that self-described moderate Republicans are warming up to the idea of implementing work requirements and making eligibility checks more frequent, though these provisions wouldn’t come close to fulfilling the $880 billion in cuts that Republicans asked the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the committee that oversees Medicaid, to find.
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