Exclusive — Sen. Thune: We’re Only Targeting ‘Waste, Fraud, and Abuse’ in Medicaid

Republicans in the Senate are only targeting “waste, fraud, and abuse” in Medicaid, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) made clear during an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday while discussing the “big, beautiful bill,” assuring listeners that the GOP is not interested in hurting beneficiaries.

Host Matthew Boyle noted that President Donald Trump has made it clear that he does not want to see Medicaid cut except for waste, fraud, and abuse.

“Can you talk to us a little bit about this?” Boyle asked the majority leader, noting that some senators are “concerned about rural hospitals, particularly in red states … that didn’t take the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare.”

“Right,” Thune began, noting that Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Rick Scott (R-FL) are “kind of in sort of opposite ends of the spectrum on Medicaid.”

“Senator Scott, of course, wants us to — he thinks there are a lot of lot of things in the program that qualify as waste, fraud and abuse, and so do we. Senator Hawley, obviously a different view on that, but that’s what we’re trying to reconcile in the end, Matt, is to get everybody at a place where we’re targeting waste, fraud, abuse in the program,” Thune explained, assuring that there is “plenty of it.”

“And that’s what the President has wanted us to do, and we work closely with him and his team as we’ve gone through this process. But at the end of the day, we want to make sure that this doesn’t hurt beneficiaries,” Thune emphasized, blasting the narrative from the left.

“It doesn’t cut Medicaid. We are continuing to grow Medicaid. We’re just growing at a slower rate than what has been allowed for under the existing law, which, by the way, grew Medicaid in the last five years at 50 percent,” he said, explaining that this is not sustainable.

“A lot of that’s because when Obama and Obamacare and then Biden, they expanded the definition and got a lot of able-bodied adult males eligible and got people on the program,” he said, noting that they introduced illegal immigrants as well and those who should at least have some sort of work requirement to participate in the program.

“It dramatically expanded it in a way that took it away from its original purpose. So what we’re talking about here is getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse, strengthening and improving the program for the people who need it the most and for whom it was intended and really making this program more solvent for the long term,” he said, describing this as a “work in progress.”

“We’ve got different members in different places. But on the rural hospital issue, since you mentioned it, that is something we’re trying to, we’re coming up with a solution for,” he asserted. “We’re going to try and address the issue. If there are rural hospitals adversely impacted — I’ve got a lot of them in my state — we want to ensure that they’re taken care of.”

“But I think we can do that without hurting beneficiaries, and at the same time that we are strengthening, improving this program and getting rid of a lot of the Biden-era waste, fraud, and abuse that exists in Medicaid today,” Thune added.

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Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.