The Big, Beautiful Bill is in the midst of a restructuring, and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.) is working to get Medicare Advantage cuts in the bill, despite reported objections from both the White House and from much of the MAGA universe.
“People who play around with Medicare lose elections,” President Donald Trump told Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.). Multiple sources in the health care world told the Washington Reporter that cuts to Medicare Advantage could be politically devastating for Trump and Republicans in the 2026 midterms.
Health care advocates caution that Cassidy’s No UPCODE provision could prove devastating to senior, and noted that Cassidy’s decision to partner with Sen. Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.) is curious given the need for Republicans to support the Big, Beautiful Bill.
Merkley, however, sounded unlikely to want the provision packaged into reconciliation.
Likewise, Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) said that he too is “pretty skeptical of doing anything on Medicare in reconciliation.”
Senate Republicans have seen polling that shows that 63 percent of voters believe a cut to Medicare Advantage is a cut to Medicare generally. Cassidy’s proposal has found support, though, from many of his Senate GOP colleagues.
Several leading conservatives sounded the alarm about possible cuts.
“President Trump has been very clear,” Jack Posobiec, the senior editor at Human Events, noted. “He’s not okay with cutting Medicare Advantage.”
“RFK Jr. feels the same, says he supports it fully. But then there’s Senator Bill Cassidy, the guy who voted to impeach Trump, quietly trying to trim it down in this huge bill they’re calling ‘beautiful,’ Posobiec said.
“Sounds off, doesn’t it? Cutting Medicare Advantage is a bad move for the Republicans…It’s also a real let-down for seniors who’ve paid into this system their whole lives,” he continued.
Cassidy’s testy relationships with both Trump and with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have caused him problems in the past.
The Louisiana lawmaker famously voted to impeach Trump in 2021, and came close to tanking Kennedy nomination to helm the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).