LeadingAge Backs Sen. Bernie Sanders Against Medicaid Cuts

WASHINGTON—Officials from the aging services nonprofit LeadingAge joined Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), to shed light on the impact of the 2025 reconciliation bill’s nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid for older adults and their families.

“We are an aging country,” said Sanders. “Seniors will need some kind of long-term care in their lifetimes. Families throughout the country seek our support.”

Sanders referred to the help made possible through America’s social safety net–funded by Medicaid and delivered via home health care providers, senior centers, nursing homes and more. 

“When you cut Medicaid by over $900 billion, as this bill does, nursing homes and long-term health care providers will be losing a major source of their revenue,” he said.

Katie Smith Sloan, LeadingAge’s president and CEO, explained the critical role Medicaid plays as the primary payer of long-term services and supports, and the public program relied on by millions of older adults and families who cannot afford to pay out of pocket and have no long-term care insurance. 

“The undeniable fact is America’s infrastructure of services and supports for older people was inadequate and unsustainable before passage of the 2025 Budget Reconciliation Act,” said Sloan. “The changes called for in the act and now law will weaken the existing system at a time when demand for services and supports is growing. The supply of available caregivers is not keeping up with the growth of the older population.”

Although the full details of the act are still to be determined, what is known, Sloan said, “is that this legislation will establish more hurdles for providers–whether through shortened retroactive eligibility or limits on the provider taxes states rely on to fund Medicaid or by, by the financial decisions states are forced to make. We can only look to history to understand this. Historically, states’ response to budgetary pressures have been to cut Medicaid eligibility, to shave benefits or to cut provider payments to cover the costs of delivering care, which means fewer dollars to pay staff.”

“It seems to me and I think to all of us that in the richest country in the world that we should take care of our most vulnerable citizens with the respect and compassion and dignity that they are entitled to often after working their entire lives helping our society and that is not the case today,” said Sanders.