How many of his constituents did John McGuire vote to kick off Medicaid?

Thousands and thousands.

I’m no expert on Medicaid or Medicare (or much else, for that matter). But when I read that the budget resolution passed by the House last week—with a yea vote by Rep. McGuire—requires $880 billion in cuts over ten years, and that these cuts will hit Medicaid, I decided to do some digging. How might this affect my neighbors in Rep. McGuire’s district?

So the first question is, How many how people in the 5th are on Medicaid? The answer, according to data from the state: More than 186,000. That’s nearly a quarter of the district’s population, and it includes almost 69,000 children. That’s counting kids covered by FAMIS, which is Virginia’s version of CHIP, the state/federal insurance program that covers low-income children.

Now, if you joined the phone-in town hall that Rep. McGuire held earlier this week, you might’ve heard him point out that the word “Medicaid” doesn’t appear one time in the budget resolution. This is true but highly misleading.

He’s right that the resolution doesn’t mention Medicaid. What it does, though, is require the House Energy and Commerce committee to cut $880 billion from the programs it oversees. Those include health programs like Medicaid and CHIP/FAMIS as well as the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and others.

In theory, the committee could find $880 billion in cuts without hitting healthcare programs. This is in fact what President Trump has said they should do.

But in practice, there’s no way. Medicaid makes up the large majority of the money overseen by Energy and Commerce. One estimate I saw, which I couldn’t confirm, put the number as high as 75 percent.

In any case, the fact is that the committee just doesn’t oversee enough non-Medicaid spending for them to avoid cutting healthcare.

How many folks in the 5th district could be affected?

Of course, it depends on how big the cuts are and how they’re structured, but we can do some back-of-the-napkin calculations.

Let’s say they cut Medicaid in rough proportion to its share of the budget they control—call it 75 percent, just for the sake of argument. 75 percent of $880 billion is $660 billion.

Then, just to be conservative, let’s round down to an even $600 billion in cuts over the next decade.

Gutting $600 billion from Medicaid would represent a 10 percent decrease from current spending.

So how many people would be affected by that? Well, remember that more than 186,000 people in the 5th district are on Medicaid, including some 69,000 kids.

So if the number of enrollees also drops by 10 percent, that will mean at least 18,000 of our neighbors, including 7,000 kids, lose their health insurance.

Of course, Congress could choose to spread the pain more broadly by cutting benefits rather than enrollees. In that case, the number of his own constituents that John McGuire thinks should get by with worse health insurance would be well north of 18,000.

If this strikes you as scary or wrong, you can let our Congressman know by calling his D.C. office at 202-225-4711 or sending him an email via his website.

Of course, I could be wrong. If so, please set me straight!

As I said, I’m no expert. I’m just doing what reporting I can, online, from home. If you understand this stuff better than I do and can help me correct these numbers, please contact me at watchmanva5@proton.me.