February 20, 2025 11:27 AM UTC

Colorado Braces for Catastrophic Medicaid Cuts as Gabe Evans Hides

• 3 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

President Donald Trump wants to extend his 2017 tax cuts for rich people as soon as possible, but he also knows that he needs to avoid the political third rails of making cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

But as The New York Times explains, something’s gotta give…and it looks like it might be Medicaid:

President Trump’s big legislative ambition — extending his signature tax cuts — may have just crashed into his newly expressed wish to protect the Medicaid program.

Mr. Trump said Tuesday night on Fox News that he wouldn’t make cuts to Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program that mostly covers poor Americans. But making substantial cuts to Medicaid is a key part of congressional Republicans’ plan to extend the tax cuts.

“Medicare, Medicaid — none of that stuff is going to be touched,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Sean Hannity. “We won’t have to.”

Mike Johnson, the House Speaker, has been hard at work on a major bill that can balance various priorities of Mr. Trump and his caucus: a desire for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, a wish to trim federal spending, and concerns about rising federal debts.

The budget Mr. Johnson negotiated for the next decade, a first step in passing that agenda, calls for around $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid, in an effort to counterbalance a portion of the tax cuts. [Pols emphasis]

Elliott Wenzler and Seth Klamann of The Denver Post have more on what Medicaid cuts would mean for Colorado:

As of October, 1.1 million Coloradans were enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, according to KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, which provides health care policy information…[Pols emphasis]

…State lawmakers are already facing roughly $1 billion hole in the state budget. Medicaid accounts for roughly a third of Colorado’s general-fund expenditures, with much of that money going to care for older residents or those with disabilities. The state Medicaid program overshot its budget by $120 million last year, and rising expenses are one part of the state’s budget crisis this year.

Yikes! Roughly 1.1 million Coloradans and hundreds of millions in funding cuts are bad news indeed. And what would that look like on the ground?

Jeff Tieman, CEO of the Colorado Hospital Association, said any cuts to Medicaid could be devastating for rural hospitals in the state, which work with razor-thin and sometimes negative margins.

“It would mean that people lose coverage and lose access, but it would also mean that we have to close down services, close down hospitals,” he said. 

Via Georgetown University, here’s how Medicaid coverage breaks down in each of Colorado’s eight congressional districts:

We highlighted the numbers in CO-08, where nearly 20% of the district population relies on Medicaid/CHIP funding and where Republican Rep. Gabe Evans is one of the most endangered GOP incumbents in the country in 2026. You would think Evans would be smart enough to have joined eight House Republicans — each of whom represent large Hispanic populations in Congress — in publicly pushing House Speaker Mike Johnson to stay away from making cuts to Medicaid, SNAP (food stamps), and Pell Grants.

You would be wrong, however.

As the Post notes:

In a statement to The Denver Post, U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, a Fort Lupton Republican who represents north Denver suburbs, didn’t directly address possible Medicaid cuts but said he would support “commonsense spending reductions.”

“While we only have topline numbers from the proposed budget, I look forward to working with my colleagues in Congress to protect hard working families,” he said in the statement.

If you’re not willing to oppose Medicaid cuts now, then you’re probably not going to stand in the way later. Evans has already demonstrated that he is a rubber stamp for Speaker Johnson, so it’s not hard to read the tea leaves from here.

Strikingly missing from this list is the Republican Congressman from Colorado’s 8th district, the most heavily Latino AND largest recipient of Medicaid dollars, the soon-to-be-one-term Gabe Evans.

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— The Get More Smarter Podcast (@getmoresmarter.com) February 19, 2025 at 6:30 PM

Curiously, even Congressperson Lauren Boebert (R-Weld County) is smart enough to not hide out with Gabe-ish. After accusing Democrats of “fearmongering” (which must be a word she just learned recently), Boebert said this to The Denver Post:

“President Trump has said he does not want to cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid and I stand with him on that commitment,” she said in a statement.

If Gabe Evans can’t even be smarter than Lauren Boebert, he’s in big trouble. His best hope at this point might be that Trump confuses Republicans into inaction.

Cutting Medicaid is not a vote that anybody should be excited to cast.