The President’s budget proposal, which assumes the passage of the Medicaid savings portion of the AHCA, would make $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade.
Medicaid’s exact federal funding mechanism remains undecided—it may be either a per capita (per enrollee) grant or fixed funding in the form of a block grant—but either way,
state responsibility will be emphasized. The Congressional Budget Office anticipates
that states will choose to roll back the Obama-era Medicaid expansion.
President Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, earlier described Social Security Disability as “wasteful,” not because of fraud or
overpayments—SSA’s definition of disability is
actually very strict—but because of systemic issues with Social Security finance. Indeed, the DI fund is slated to exhaust in 2023, at which point there
will be an automatic 11% drop in benefits. NBC reports
that the Trump proposal would save about $72 billion through changes to disability programs over the next 10 years.