July 08, 2025 10:31 AM UTC

For 15,000 Local Medicaid Patients, The Big Bad Future Is Now

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• by: Colorado Pols

In a deliberate effort to minimize the political damage in the upcoming midterms from the cuts in the Republican budget bill signed into law last week by President Donald Trump, some of the most painful retail-facing provisions of the bill like the new reporting requirements to qualify for and retain Medicaid health coverage were written to take effect just after the 2026 elections. The New York Times reported last week on the timing of the tax cuts and other goodies in the bill versus the benefit cuts that will cost Republicans votes:

At the core of Republicans’ newly finalized domestic policy package is an important political calculation. It provides its most generous tax breaks early on and reserves some of its most painful benefit cuts until after the 2026 midterm elections.

The result is a soon-to-be enacted law that may generate bigger refunds for some taxpayers when they file their returns next spring, even as a series of significant changes to Medicaid and other aid programs loom as a future threat to the finances of poorer families…

Alex Jacquez, who served on the National Economic Council under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said the setup would also allow Republicans to avoid blame for what he described as a set of “fairly disastrous and incredibly unpopular” spending cuts before the midterm election, when future control of the House and Senate will be on the ballot.

Unfortunately for Republicans facing tough races in the midterms, the strategy to front-load the tax breaks and delay the pain from the benefit cuts until after the 2026 elections didn’t take into account the need for healthcare providers to plan for a future with less revenue–which resulted in the decision to close a rural hospital in McCook, Nebraska last week. Many more rural hospitals face the same bleak choices in the coming months, including rural health providers across Colorado. It’s important to remember that the closure of these hospitals will hurt more than Medicaid patients, affecting everyone in the area who needs health services including the privately insured.

While rural residents nervously await news about the fate of their local health care providers, thousands of Medicaid patients in Colorado are seeing their healthcare disrupted in a slightly different but more immediate way: by the Republican budget’s new restrictions on funding to Planned Parenthood, even for care that has nothing to do with abortion. 9NEWS’ Angeline McCall reported last night:

Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains has suspended services to patients who use Medicaid for insurance following the signing of federal tax and spending legislation by President Donald Trump on Friday.

The organization notified approximately 15,000 patients, about 25% of their patient base, that they could no longer receive care at Planned Parenthood facilities, according to Adrienne Mansanares, CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains…

The law, which Trump signed on July 4, prevents people on Medicaid from choosing Planned Parenthood as their healthcare provider. The change affects access to a full range of reproductive and sexual health services, including breast cancer screening, cervical cancer screening, birth control, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment and transgender hormonal therapy.

Planned Parenthood’s pre-programmed conservative haters are usually not aware that the organization provides a wide variety of health care services other than abortion and gender-affirming care. This is consistent with the general ignorance on the right about healthcare needs specific to women and nontraditional but very much existing segments of the population. But for thousands of Medicaid patients whose medical needs made Planned Parenthood the appropriate choice for their care provider, Republicans in Congress just made an adverse choice for you.

And it’s just the beginning, folks. Medicaid patients in November of 2026 will know by then what awaits them in December. The worst of what Republicans passed last week may not have formally begun, but voters will go to the polls knowing full well who to blame.

We’ve said it over and over: none of this harm had to happen. It was all a choice. That will be true for the political consequences, too.