Kennedy Stumbles on Medicaid Details as Lawmakers Press on Plans

Answers given by President Donald Trump‘s choice to lead the US Health and Human Services Department, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., during his confirmation hearing did little to assuage Democrats’ doubts over whether he has the experience to steward the multibillion-dollar Medicaid program.

Kennedy fielded an array of questions from the Senate Finance Committee at the Wednesday hearing probing his understanding of various aspects of Medicaid policy. The former presidential candidate expressed the need to improve outcomes for patients under the program but stumbled when pressed by senators over details.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who will question the nominee again Thursday as the head of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, asked Kennedy how he planned to better integrate care for elderly individuals dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid.

Kennedy responded that Medicaid was “fully paid for by the federal government,” when the program is jointly funded with the help of states.

After the hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said he was left with the impression that Kennedy showed inexperience in the face of questioning.

“These are complicated programs. I just got the feeling that he really was mixing them up, and it’s one of the reasons why I said I just find this nominee to be very unprepared,” Wyden told reporters.

The first Trump administration was criticized for its stance on the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion, and Kennedy was tasked Wednesday with trying to explain the administration’s position and plans on the program going forward.

“Most people who are on Medicaid are not happy,” Kennedy said. “The premiums are too high. The deductibles are too high. The networks are narrow. The best doctors will not accept it.”

“Medicaid was originally designed for a target population, the poorest Americans. It’s now been dramatically expanded, and the irony of the expansion is that the poorest Americans are now being robbed,” he said.

Joan Alker, executive director at the Georgetown Center for Children and Families, pointed to inaccuracies in that statement, and was left with the impression that Kennedy didn’t have a firm grasp of how Medicaid works.

“He routinely confused it with other programs—sounds like he confused it with Medicare. He also appeared to confuse it with the ACA marketplaces,” Alker said.

Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) pushed back during the hearing on the notion that Medicaid was widely unpopular with the American people.

In his questioning of Kennedy, he pointed to data in Louisiana and his home state of New Mexico, which found a large majority of beneficiaries were satisfied with the care they received under Medicaid.

Lujan then asked Kennedy if he supported cutting Medicaid.

“President Trump has not told me that he wants to cut Medicaid. He has told me to make it better,” Kennedy replied. “I support making it better, senator.”

“If President Trump asked you to cut Medicaid, will you do it?” Lujan asked.

“It’s not up to me to cut Medicaid. It would be up to Congress,” Kennedy said.

Should Kennedy embrace cuts to the program, that would put him at odds with most voters, said Alker, who pointed to a recent KFF poll that found about 60% of respondents didn’t think reducing spending on the program should be an important or top priority for the new administration.

Democrats were also skeptical that Kennedy and Trump had a plan to make Medicaid better.

“For literally hundreds of thousands of Virginians, Medicaid is what prevents them from health crises on a daily, and weekly basis,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said at the hearing. “And some imaginary new plan, and if there was a new plan that was to be the basis of what Trump was going to do in repealing Obamacare, I would have thought by now we’d have seen it.”