From The Kentucky Lantern: Hard choices face Kentucky Republican tasked with recommending Medicaid cuts
Rep. Brett Guthrie chairs panel set to mark up ‘big beautiful bill’
By: Jamie Lucke, Sarah Ladd and McKenna Horsley
As U.S. Rep. Brett Guthrie prepares to lead a debate on the future of Medicaid, his home state of Kentucky has more at stake than most.
Guthrie, R-Bowling Green, is chairman of a House committee that on Tuesday is set to start proposing $880 billion in federal budget savings over the next 10 years.
Guthrie’s assignment will be impossible, experts say, without cutting the federal-state program that pays for almost 1 in 3 Kentuckians’ health care and has become an underpinning of the state’s economy.
“Medicaid has become important to local economies throughout the state and a key pathway to health care for many Kentuckians,” says the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce in a statement last week that also mentions the Chamber’s “long voiced concerns about the impact of rising Medicaid costs.”