With the threat of President Trump's ire hanging over the heads of Republicans, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is desperately attempting to rustle up enough votes to pass a revised version of the GOP's health-care bill. To do so, McConnell will need to sell a handful of deeply concerned moderate Republicans on the bill's proposed Medicaid cuts, and The Washington Post reports he is doing so by suggesting the cuts will never actually happen:
Under the current version of the Senate health-care bill, federal Medicaid spending would drop by 26 percent starting in 2026, pegged to the Urban Consumer Price Index. That's still eight-and-a-half years away — long past senators' next election. And cutting Medicaid is so unpopular, with so much resistance from the health-care industry, that it's likely Congress would find a way to avoid the cuts when the time comes. After all, that's what Congress did for years by enacting the so-called "Doc Fix" to a Medicare doctors' payment formula. [The Washington Post]
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