Alliance Alert: There are growing efforts to reverse the harmful Medicaid cuts enacted by Congress last year, particularly as the incoming Congress prepares to consider changes that could protect health coverage for millions of Americans. We strongly support efforts to repeal these cuts, including the new Medicaid work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks that threaten to create barriers to accessing and maintaining essential health services.
These changes are particularly concerning for people with mental health and substance use challenges, who often rely on Medicaid to access the peer support, case mangement, and community-based services that help them maintain their recovery and independence. Additional paperwork, reporting requirements, and more frequent eligibility reviews could cause people to lose coverage even when they remain eligible, disrupting services and relationships that are critical to their wellbeing.
The Alliance strongly supports helping people who want to work access meaningful employment, but employment must never be a precondition for receiving health services. We must invest in supported employment, peer services, benefits counseling, and other community-based supports that help people prepare for, obtain, and maintain employment when they choose to do so. Taking away someone’s healthcare because they are not working is counterproductive, particularly when the very services Medicaid provides may be what they need to become healthy and ready to pursue employment in the first place.
We are hopeful that the incoming Congress will find bipartisan support to reverse or significantly mitigate the Medicaid changes pushed through last year before they result in millions of people across our nation losing health coverage. Protecting Medicaid is not only about preserving healthcare coverage; it is about protecting recovery, independence, community inclusion, and the ability of people with disabilities to live fulfilling lives.
The Alliance will continue working with our state and national advocacy partners to push for the reversal of these harmful policies, protect access to essential services, and ensure that people with mental health and substance use challenges are not left behind as federal healthcare policy continues to evolve.
Hospitals and Dems Rally to Reverse Medicaid Cuts
By Sophie Garner and Kelly Hooper | Politico | November 12, 2026
HOSPITALS SEE AN OPENING — With Democrats set to control Congress in January, hospitals hope lawmakers could be persuaded to undo some of the Medicaid cuts that Republicans passed last year, POLITICO’s Simon J. Levien reports.
The industry plans a lobbying campaign to make the case, its top Washington representative told POLITICO.
Key context: Democrats already support repealing the cuts in Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, so success could hinge on convincing a few GOP senators and President Donald Trump to join them. Medicaid funding flows to hospitals when they care for individuals with low income who rely on the program.
The American Hospital Association, the industry’s Washington lobbying group, has a new leader with ties to the decision-makers. Former state Rep. Steve Walsh, a Massachusetts Democrat, served alongside the likely next House majority leader, Rep. Katherine Clark, in the Massachusetts state House and previously led the state’s hospital association.
“Making sure that Congress understands the devastation that can be caused by the cuts,” Walsh said, “is job one.”
State of play: Repealing the cuts is a long shot but not outside the realm of possibility.
Congress has previously reversed course on legislation that would pay for the cost of tax cuts or new government benefits. Lawmakers scrapped a so-called Cadillac tax on high-end insurance plans and another tax on medical device makers designed to help pay for Obamacare, for instance.
Democrats, who plan to make rescinding the cuts one of their first top priorities, could attract some Republican supporters, such as Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who lamented the cuts last year before voting for them.
Republicans could still block the legislation in the Senate by invoking the 60-vote filibuster rule.
Why it matters: The first of the cuts from last year’s GOP megabill are set to take effect in 2027, with new work requirements beginning in January and new rules on state-funding contributions beginning in October.
If the law takes effect, hospitals would be required to care for additional uninsured patients, potentially creating logjams in emergency departments and rising unpaid care.