25 Arrested While Protesting GOP Medicaid Cuts

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Within the first few minutes of Tuesday’s House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing on planned Republican Medicaid cuts—which would render more than 8 million Americans uninsured—a contingent of protesters entered the room in Washington, DC’s Rayburn Building where members of Congress had gathered. The protesters, shouting “No cuts to Medicaid!” represented groups including the disability rights protest organization ADAPT. Twenty-five demonstrators were arrested and removed from the building.

The committee’s proposal for extensive cuts to federal health funding, including sweeping Medicaid cuts, are estimated by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to likely “reduce the number of people with health insurance by at least 8.6 million” nationwide. The legislation would also enact more than $700 billion dollars in health-related cuts, in addition to also promoting work requirements for people on Medicaid—which tends only to serve as a means of of kicking them off, even though federal data shows that a majority of adults on Medicaid already work full- or part-time.

After the initial protests, committee Chair Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), who released the legislation on Sunday evening—Mother’s Day—threatened the protesters with arrest for disrupting the hearing, calling the outcry illegal and “a criminal offense.”