The cuts to Medicaid included in the 2025 Republican reconciliation law explicitly target the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, but the law’s harms will extend well beyond the adults in the expansion group who lose coverage.
Policy Basics
Medicaid provides health coverage to low-income families and individuals, including children, parents, pregnant people, older adults, and people with disabilities. The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) covers children in families that earn too much to receive Medicaid but can’t afford insurance through the private market.
We work to encourage states to adopt the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, identify obstacles to Medicaid enrollment, develop and advance recommendations to maximize enrollment of eligible people, and protect Medicaid and CHIP from cuts or structural changes that would hurt low-income beneficiaries.