Tom Cotton is adamant about one thing—repealing Obamacare. But what the Republican running for Senate in Arkansas has avoided answering during this whole campaign is just what he’d do for all the people who gained coverage through the law, and through the state’s private option Medicaid expansion, after repeal. David Ramsey at the Arkansas blog looks at Cotton’s past history on Medicaid to get some clues as to what Cotton would do as senator. Hint: it’s not good for Medicaid, or the people on it.
Block granting Medicaid was one of the key points raised by Cotton in both Monday and Tuesday’s debates when asked about repealing Obamacare. He refused to say whether he had a plan for the people who would lose private option coverage if Obamacare was repealed, but said he would “start over” and … block grant Medicaid. Unlike some of his vaguer ideas, we have a somewhat detailed picture of what Cotton means here. Block granting Medicaid is a key feature of the Ryan budget and the Republican Study Committee budget, both of which Cotton voted for.
The first thing to understand about the Ryan budget and the RSC budget is that they eliminate Medicaid expansion entirely. All funding for Obamacare’s expansion of coverage: gone. (Goodbye private option.) So what about Medicaid in non-expansion states, or the smaller version of Medicaid which existed in expansion states before Obamacare? Well, the Ryan budget and RSC budgets use block granting to also cut funding for old Medicaid — including CHIP coverage for kids, like the ARKids program in Arkansas. According to an evaluation by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), compared to current law, the Ryan budget would cut Medicaid funding available to states by 26 percent by 2024, and even more after that on top of cutting all funds available via expansion. The RSC budget would cut even more.
Ramsey notes that whenever Medicaid comes up, block grants is what Cotton offers up, refusing to directly address the fact that 200,000 people would immediately lose coverage if he got his wish. But the important point here is that even people who have had traditional Medicaid—pre-Obamacare—would be kicked off, too. That includes a lot of kids.
We don’t have any Arkansas endorsements this cycle, so if you want to give to Mark Pryor, you’ll have to go to his campaign site. But if you’re still looking for great Democrats running for the Senate, as this election goes down to the wire, we’ve got great candidates to choose from.
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Cotton can’t say it out loud during a high-profile campaign, particularly when the health of so many Arkansans is at stake, but if he had his way he’d starve Medicaid down to nothing.
