Trump’s budget cuts children’s health insurance program

May 24 01:00 2017 by ushadmin

President Donald Trump’s budget plans to cut the Children’s Health Insurance Program by at least 20% over the next two fiscal years and slash Medicaid, which covers millions more children.

Millions of poor and working families could lose their health coverage if his proposed budget, released Tuesday and called “A New Foundation for American Greatness,” gets through as-is. It would hit children’s health care hard and break Trump’s campaign promise to “save” Medicaid “without cuts.”

Over the next decade, the proposed budget would cut Medicaid more than $800 billion, or nearly a quarter of what the health care program is projected to spend on poor families.

Poor children are covered by a complicated mix of programs. Medicaid covers 37 million children. The Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP, has 8.9 million enrolled. Together, these two programs cover about one in three American children, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Cuts to the social safety net

When Trump ran on a promise to end Obamacare and give people better health care, he promised not to touch Medicaid “like every other Republican,” and yet Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said Monday that Trump personally approved each cut…