John,

I wanted to make sure you saw Deborah’s message from yesterday.

The dismantling of our health care system isn’t going to start with Project 2025, it’s happening now. Earlier this year, House Republicans released an extremist proposal that called for the gutting of popular and successful health care programs—Medicare and Medicaid.

These programs are lifelines for older people, people with disabilities, and people with low incomes of any age. We cannot let them be replaced with a for-profit system that seeks to benefit the CEO’s of multi-billion dollar insurance companies at the expense of the most vulnerable Americans―while leaving millions without access to health care.

Congress must step in now.

Contact your members of Congress and tell them to fight back against right-wing attacks on Medicare, Medicaid, and our entire health care system.

Thank you for all you do,

Meredith Dodson
Senior Director of Public Policy, CHN Action

-- DEBORAH'S EMAIL --

John,

We’ve spoken before about the danger the extremist right-wing Project 2025 poses to democracy, but it also poses an existential threat to our nation’s health care system.

There are currently two forms of Medicare in the United States: traditional Medicare which is run by the federal government and accepted by nearly all doctors and hospitals, and there’s Medicare Advantage (MA), a private health care plan that beneficiaries can choose in place of traditional Medicare.

In 2024, a Congressional investigative agency found that the Medicare program will pay MA $83 billion more than what it would cost if every beneficiary was on traditional Medicare.¹ Project 2025 calls for making MA the default enrollment option for all Medicare recipients, which is a move towards fully privatized Medicare for millions of people.

Sixty-seven million older adults and people with disabilities rely on Medicare as their primary health insurance and 81% of Americans hold a positive view of traditional Medicare.^2,3

Completely privatizing Medicare will only hurt the people who need it most while increasing profits for greedy insurance companies. Tell your members of Congress: stop Project 2025’s attacks on Medicare.

On page 498, Project 2025 states it would repeal “health policies enacted under the Obama and Biden Administrations such as the Medicare Shared Savings Program and Inflation Reduction Act.”⁴ Just this week, we celebrated Medicare’s new-found ability to negotiate drug prices thanks to reforms included in the Inflation Reduction Act. Project 2025 would undo all of that while also cutting recipients off from life-saving care.

It’s not just Medicare they’re after and they’re not waiting until after the election to try to push through Project 2025 proposals, either. The Republican Study Committee (RSC), which represents 80% of House Republicans and all of its leadership, including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, already released a proposed budget this year.

The RSC’s budget calls for a $4.5 trillion cut from the Affordable Care Act, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and Medicaid. They would remove funding for ACA Marketplace insurance plans and for the ACA’s expansion of the Medicaid program to poor adults ― denying insurance to 45 million people. The RSC would place limits on Medicaid funding, regardless of need, denying services to tens of millions more and drastically reducing support for state Medicaid programs. Project 2025 is also all about limiting Medicaid―proposing lifetime benefit caps and/or time limits for poor people who are not elderly and not disabled, estimated to deny Medicaid to 18.5 million people.⁵ More than 7 million seniors and people with disabilities rely on Medicaid for home care services and nursing home payments.⁶ Slashing that funding will put millions of people at risk for lower quality care, or eliminate appropriate care altogether.

The right-wing policy proposals in Project 2025 are already making their way into current budget negotiations. We cannot allow this extremist agenda to decimate a critical program that has served seniors and people with disabilities for half a century.

Write to your members of Congress today to demand they reject right-wing proposals that undermine Medicare and Medicaid and fight back against Project 2025’s radical plan for Americans’ health care.

Thank you for all you do,

Deborah Weinstein
Executive Director, CHN Action

¹ Chapter 12: The Medicare Advantage program: Status report
² Medicare Monthly Enrollment
³ KFF Health Tracking Poll March 2023: Public Doesn't Want Politicians To Upend Popular Programs
⁴ Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership
⁵ Center for American Progress: Project 2025 Medicaid Lifetime Cap Proposal Threatens Health Care Coverage for up to 18.5 Million Americans.
⁶ Fact Sheet: As House Republicans Release Budget to Increase Health Care Costs and Take Away Coverage, President Biden and Vice President Harris Fight to Lower Health Care Costs and Protect and Strengthen the ACA, Medicaid, and Medicare