Colorado’s Jeff Hurd joins 15 other House Republicans signaling they’ll oppose Senate version of the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ over Medicaid changes
The Senate’s proposals cut deeper into Medicaid compared to what the House passed in May, setting up a fight between the two chambers
Larry Robinson/Grand Junction Daily Sentinel
U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, who represents much of western and southern Colorado, joined 15 other House Republicans on Tuesday in threatening to oppose his party’s sweeping domestic policy bill if additional cuts to Medicaid are passed in the Senate.
Hurd signed onto a letter to Senate GOP leadership expressing concern over various changes to the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that would cut further into Medicaid spending than what the House approved in May.
The sprawling package is meant to deliver much of President Donald Trump’s agenda on taxes, health care, energy and immigration and more. The Senate is racing to pass the bill and get it to Trump’s desk by a self-imposed July 4 deadline. Any changes made in the Senate will send the legislation back to the House for final approval.
The bill initially passed the House on May 22 by just one vote. That means any one Republican House member could be able to potentially sink the bill when it returns to the lower chamber, if nearly all vote the same way.
Republicans control the Senate with a 53-47 majority and hold a 220-212 majority in the House. They can afford to lose only three votes in either chamber to still be able to pass the legislation.
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“Protecting Medicaid is essential for the vulnerable constituents we were elected to represent,” the letter from House Republicans states. “Therefore, we cannot support a final bill that threatens access to coverage or jeopardizes the stability of our hospitals and providers.”
The House-passed version of the bill would already amount to nearly $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid funding over the next decade, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
That is due to several changes, including new Medicaid work requirements and restrictions on providing care to undocumented immigrants, which the budget office believes will lead to as many as 10 million people losing Medicaid insurance by 2034.
Hurd, who voted for the bill in the House, said he did so to make Medicaid more efficient and weed out waste, fraud and abuse. His 3rd Congressional District has the highest rate of Medicaid recipients in Colorado.
The letter states that House Republicans’ Medicaid provisions “reflect a more pragmatic and compassionate standard, and we urged that it be retained in the final bill.”
The letter calls out a litany of changes proposed in the Senate, including lowering provider taxes or fee rates for hospitals.
Several states, including Colorado, have some form of tax or fee that they levy on hospitals, which generate revenue used to draw larger matching funds from the federal government and increase the reimbursement rate for Medicaid.
Hospitals have blasted the attempt to limit that revenue, which they say would be catastrophic since many health care facilities already operate on thin or negative margins, particularly in rural areas. States like Colorado, which is projecting a multiyear budget deficit, would be hard pressed to replace the funding.
Megan Axelrod, vice president of regulatory and federal affairs for the Colorado Hospital Association, said in a recent interview that the legislation would be “really devastating when it comes to the financial viability (of hospitals) as well as access to care.”
House Republicans’ letter says the Senate proposals fail to preserve existing state programs and impose stricter limits without giving hospitals sufficient time to adjust to new budgetary constraints.
“We are also concerned about rushed implementation timelines, penalties for expansion states, changes to the community engagement requirements for adults with dependents, and cuts to emergency Medicaid funding,” the letter continues. “These changes would place additional burdens on hospitals already stretched thin by legal and moral obligations to provide care.”
While the Senate’s approach would likely mean even less funding for health care providers and fewer Americans with health insurance, health care leaders have said the House-approved proposals will also be damaging.
Earlier this month, the CEO of a community health care clinic serving 20,000 patients in Hurd’s district sent a letter to the congressman and others from Colorado’s federal delegation asking them to reject the domestic policy bill over its Medicaid provisions.
Dustin Moyer, who runs Mountain Family Health Centers, said the changes that had passed the House and are now pending in the Senate “will only put health care coverage further out of reach for communities who have limited coverage options.”
Nick Bayer, a spokesperson for Hurd’s office, said in a statement the day after the House’s bill passed that Hurd had voted to “help save Medicaid by tightening work requirements, removing illegals, and requiring states to eliminate the fraud in their administering of the program.”
Hurd was the only Republican from Colorado to sign onto the letter calling for changes to the bill in the Senate. Democrats in both the House and Senate remain uniformly opposed to the legislation.
