April 25, 2025 11:14 AM UTC

Gabe Evans Disses Jeff Hurd Over Impending Medicaid Cuts

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• by: Colorado Pols

In a story aired yesterday evening on Colorado Public Radio, health care reporter John Daley sat down with Colorado’s most vulnerable Republican Rep. Gabe Evans to talk about his role as a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in meeting the $880 billion in cuts called for in the budget reconciliation resolution passed by the GOP majorities in both chambers. As he has in previous interviews, Evans once again deflected questions about how his committee can achieve the target for budget cuts without large reductions to Medicaid eligibility that could throw thousands of residents of Evans’ district off the coverage rolls, insisting that the cuts can be achieved painlessly:

Twenty-nine percent of Evans’ 8th District, 214,00 people, are enrolled in Medicaid. That’s among the most in any Colorado district, according to the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing.

If deep Medicaid cuts go through, Colorado could lose as many as 12,000 jobs, $1.3 billion in state economic productivity and $82 million in state and local tax dollars next year. That’s according to a letter Gov. Jared Polis and Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera sent last week to the members of the state’s Congressional delegation.

Evans, in a statement in response to the letter, accused the governor of misrepresenting the facts.

“I don’t support cuts that harm Colorado providers or patients – I support removing waste and fraud. On Polis’ watch, millions in Medicaid dollars have gone to deceased individuals and illegal immigrants,” he said.

Speaking directly with Daley, Rep. Evans claimed that somewhere around $300 billion over ten years might be saved from cracking down on “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Even if that’s true it’s less than half of the total $880 billion the committee is tasked with cutting–and the assumptions that make up the $300 billion are in many cases dubious. Measures requiring Medicaid patients to prove hardship and seek employment impose burdens that could reduce the number of applicants, but not nearly enough to meet the budget resolution’s targets. Every responsible analysis of the reconciliation plan has stated clearly that there is no mathematical way to do this without hurting real people who need the help they’re getting. That’s why Evans’ freshman Colorado colleague Rep. Jeff Hurd teamed up with a dozen fellow Republicans to declare they won’t support a final “Big Beautiful Bill” that slashes Medicaid funding.

Confronted with this, Evans flat-out says that Jeff Hurd and the so-called “experts” don’t know what they’re talking about:

DALEY: Last week Rep. Jeff Hurd signed a letter with a group of lawmakers urging fellow Republicans in the leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives to preserve and strengthen Medicaid. Here’s a quote from their letter. “We cannot and will not support a final reconciliation bill that includes any reduction in Medicaid coverage for vulnerable populations.” You did not sign the letter. Why not?

EVANS: So if you go look at that letter, actually nobody from the Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans signed onto that letter. Energy and Commerce, of course, is the committee that has jurisdiction over Medicaid. And I think that’s because those of us that sit on the Energy and Commerce Committee have that assurance, having seen some of the proposals that we’re going to be able to meet that reconciliation number without impacting benefits to lawful beneficiaries of the program, as long as states like Colorado actually work hand in hand with us in order to implement these efficiencies that protect and preserve taxpayer resources for our most vulnerable.

DALEY: So Hurd and the other 11 who signed that letter are wrong? [Pols emphasis]

EVANS: Well, they don’t sit on the committee that has jurisdiction over Medicaid. So I don’t know that the same way that I don’t know the detailed discussions that are happening on committees that I don’t sit on, I don’t know if they have the same level of insight that I have, [Pols emphasis] being a member of the committee with jurisdiction.

It requires a degree of arrogance we do not possess to assert as a freshman member of Congress with no experience whatsoever in health care policy that the Congressional Budget Office, every competent outside analysis of the budget proposal, and now his own Republican colleagues, don’t possess “the same level of insight” that Evans has on this issue. Essentially, Gabe Evans is calling them all stupid.

There are two possible outcomes now: either the Energy and Commerce Committee will produce a bill that realizes the $880 billion in cuts, necessarily slashing Medicaid funding and forcing states like Colorado to throw thousands of patients who vote off the coverage rolls, or the committee will fail to meet that target after recognizing the fiscal, political, and moral impossibility of doing so.

Either way, Gabe Evans has now taken full ownership of this unpopular process, and the outcome. He just declared himself to be the smartest guy in the room.

If Evans wants another term in Congress, everyone else had better be wrong.