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KFF designs, conducts and analyzes original public opinion and survey research on Americans’ attitudes, knowledge, and experiences with the health care system to help amplify the public’s voice in major national debates.
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Medicaid Watch was a 2025 series featuring policy research, polling and news about the Medicaid financing debate. This series is no longer active. For the latest publications on Medicaid, please visit this page.
Prior KFF analysis allocated CBO’s federal Medicaid spending reductions and enrollment losses across the states, and this policy watch builds on that analysis to examine the potential impacts in expansion states compared with non-expansion states.
Our polling finds that most of Medicaid’s working population say losing their coverage would have direct consequences for their financial and personal well-being.
If Congress passes the reconciliation bill with the Finance Committee provision, 22 states might have to reduce their provider taxes on either hospitals or managed care organizations, cutting a key source of state Medicaid funding in those states. This policy watch explains how the Finance Committee provision would reduce states’ Medicaid spending, and the implications for expansion states.
On May 22, the House passed a budget reconciliation bill that includes significant changes to the Medicaid program. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the bill would reduce federal Medicaid spending by $793 billion and reduce the number of people covered by Medicaid in 2034 by 10.3 million. Many of the reductions in coverage will be among the 22 million Medicaid enrollees ages 50 and older.
This analysis details the number of people who would become uninsured from policy changes in the ACA Marketplaces and Medicaid. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that, taken together, these changes will result in 16 million more uninsured people in the year 2034 than would otherwise be the case.
On May 22, the House passed a reconciliation bill, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which would partially pay to extend expiring tax cuts by cutting Medicaid. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the bill would reduce federal Medicaid spending by $793 billion over ten years and 10.3 million fewer people would be enrolled in Medicaid in 2034, including 1.3 million people with Medicare, otherwise known as “dual-eligible individuals”.
This data note provides an overview of recent KFF polling on the public’s views of and connections to Medicaid, the federal-state government health insurance for certain low-income adults and children and long-term care program for adults 65 and older and younger adults with disabilities.
On May 22, 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a budget reconciliation bill that includes significant reductions in federal Medicaid spending to help offset the cost of tax cuts, along with changes to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), immigration reforms and other provisions. This issue brief discusses the potential implications of the bill for hospitals and explains how some hospitals (such as rural hospitals as well as urban hospitals that serve a large share of Medicaid patients) may be less well positioned than others (such as hospitals that serve a large share of commercial patients) to absorb revenue losses given their current financial status.
Republicans are not talking about repealing and replacing the ACA anymore, and the budget reconciliation bill doesn't do that, at least not directly. However, the bill would restrict health insurance for many people who have been helped by the ACA, and it would be the biggest rollback in federal support for health coverage ever.
As Congress weighs spending cuts and other changes to Medicaid, more than half (54%) of the public say they are worried significant reductions in federal Medicaid spending would negatively affect their family’s ability to obtain and afford health care, a new KFF Health Tracking Poll finds.
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