What’s up with Medicaid? Maxwell Frost says GOP leaders need to answer

U.S. Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost with state Democrats in Tallahassee on March 17, 2025, to discuss a Medicaid expansion. (Photo via House Democratic Office)

U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, an outspoken Democrat who has already clashed online with Elon Musk and confronted Gov. Ron DeSantis, came to Tallahassee on Monday, where he urged fellow Democrats and the public to question what Republicans plan to do with Medicaid.

On the eve of a nationwide Day of Action orchestrated by House Democrats to oppose potential Medicaid cuts, Frost gathered with a handful of state Democratic leaders to deliver a message that all Republicans, not just those in Washington, D.C., need to be held accountable for actions by President Donald Trump and Musk.

“A lot of these Republicans in the state House and the state Senate are getting off way too easy. On one hand, they hear praise to Elon Musk, praise to DOGE, praise to Donald Trump. And the question that I’m here to ask them, and that I hope the press will start to ask them is: If you support cuts to Medicaid, do you not realize that you’re supporting cuts to the Florida budget? That’s how this works.”

Congressional Republicans want to fully extend President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. The House Republican budget plan adopted late last month directs the House Energy and Commerce Committee to find ways to cut the deficit by at least $880 billion over the next decade. The committee holds jurisdiction over Medicaid and Medicare plus the federal children’s health insurance program (CHIP). 

Medicare is funded completely by the federal government and provides health insurance to people over the age of 65. Medicaid is the program funded jointly by the federal and state government and provides health care to the poor, elderly, and disabled. Trump has promised not to cut Medicare, which puts funding for Medicaid at risk.

Medicare amounts to about 15% of the federal budget and Medicaid to about 8.6%, according to PolitiFact.

Florida’s top economists predict that there will be roughly 4.3 million people enrolled in Florida’s Medicaid program in the current fiscal year. Enrollment is expected to increase slightly to about 4.31 million in the fiscal year beginning July 1. The estimated cost for the Medicaid program in the next fiscal year is $34.6 billion.

Frost warned that Trump will “straight up lie” and tell people Medicaid won’t be cut but that the only way to meet the $880 billion cut without paring Medicare is to cut Medicaid.

“They are going to make cuts to Medicaid if you let them go forward with this,” he said.

While Frost was speaking out against potential Medicaid cuts, state Rep. Dotie Joseph touted the need for the Legislature to pass her proposal (HB 1507) to expand Medicaid to childless, working adults who earn up to 138% of the federal poverty level.

The expansion is authorized by the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as Obamacare, but the Legislature has refused to approve it.

“Working class people deserve health care too,” Joseph said. She added that Medicaid expansion would help people living in rural communities as well as veterans — 100,000 of whom, she said, live below the poverty line in rural communities and are more likely to be uninsured. 

“These great men and women would be eligible for expanding coverage to take care of their physical and mental health needs,” she said.