Statement of Jocelyn Frye, President of the National Partnership for Women & Families
WASHINGTON, D.C. – May 13, 2025 – “The National Partnership for Women & Families strongly condemns the proposal released by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee to gut Medicaid as part of a broader reconciliation package to fund tax cuts for billion dollar corporations and the ultra wealthy.
“Medicaid currently provides essential health coverage to more than 72 million Americans, including providing health coverage to 24 million women and almost half of all children in the United States. This bill, introduced by Congressional Republican leaders, would slash $715 billion from Medicaid by 2035, the largest cut to Medicaid in history. A cut of this magnitude is irresponsible and will have disastrous consequences for the health and well-being of families across the country.
“This devastating legislation would upend the Affordable Care Act marketplaces as sources of health care for millions, taking away health insurance coverage for millions of people and shifting unbearable costs to cash-strapped states. The bill also proposes to defund Planned Parenthood, ban federal funding for gender-affirming care for youth, mandate federal work requirements for Medicaid recipients, require more frequent Medicaid eligibility checks, punish states that use their own funds to cover people regardless of their immigration status, limit retroactive Medicaid coverage, among other cuts to marketplace coverage and nursing home care.
“Congressional Republican leaders’ efforts to deny and obscure how these proposals will work and who will be impacted are wholly unpersuasive and disingenuous. The cold reality is that this bill will eviscerate the health and economic security for an estimated 13.7 million people who are projected to lose health care coverage if it is enacted. Many of these individuals would include the people most in need of health care – those living on the economic margins trying to meet the care needs of their families, including women with low-incomes, women of color, women with disabilities, immigrant women, aging women and their caregivers. Legislation designed to put more dollars into the pockets of the wealthiest people in our country, if not the world, by taking away health care from Americans with the fewest economic resources is wrong and unacceptable.
“As this bill goes to a floor vote, we urge lawmakers to reject these cuts and work together to protect the millions of people who rely on Medicaid for their health care.”
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