When congressional Republicans passed H.R. 1—the major reconciliation bill, Governor Tim Walz and Senator Amy Klobuchar warned that 250,000 Minnesotans would lose Medicaid coverage. They painted a dire picture: work requirements for able-bodied adults, eligibility checks, and basic program integrity measures would supposedly devastate our state. Rural hospitals would close. Families would be thrown into chaos. A quarter-million people kicked to the curb.
Yet here we are, months later, and reality tells a different story. After the Minnesota House passed HF 4546, which adjusted appropriations to align with the February forecast from Minnesota Management and Budget (MMB), Medicaid spending in Minnesota is not cratering—it’s going up. Enrollment remains stable around 1.2 million. In fact, the state did an audit of the impact of HR1 (Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill) and Walz’s own study found that (instead of the quarter-million people kicked off Medicaid) the state would actually increase the Medicaid rolls by 3,946. Who is being kicked off Medicaid? Fraudsters should if they make too much money, live in another state or are dead. But they aren’t.
Source: Minnesota Department of Human Services, HR1 Impacts on Medicaid, March 2, 2026
Walz and Klobuchar claimed people would lose coverage if required to prove they were working, volunteering, or job-seeking. They insisted that requiring the state to verify eligibility more regularly would strip coverage from hundreds of thousands.
Spending forecasts have not collapsed. Instead of the bleeding predicted, the state is planning to spend more but save nothing from following implementing commonsense reforms from H.R. 1. Lower improper payments and eligibility cleanups are producing savings without the human tragedy Democrats forecasted. Able-bodied adults without dependents are being asked to contribute—hardly radical.
The real question should be “Why isn’t spending going down? The February forecast should have assumed the state would comply with stricter eligibility determinations and Medicaid headcount would go down. It should, if free riders and fraudsters are kicked out.
GOP Representatives Joe McDonald and Isaac Schultz asked DFL bill author Mahamud Noor a very straight forward question. Where is the money going? If there is $9 billion in fraud in Minnesota (mostly in Medicaid) and we are cutting a quarter million people off Medicaid, where is the additional $1.2 Billion going? Noor claims its just an “enrollment adjustment.. same as every other year.” The American Experiment found that in recent years, up to 20% of Medicaid enrollees were already covered by another plan or dead. No effort to find and remove them. Just more spending on more people with zero accountability.
Governor Walz claimed HR1 would “tear health care away from a quarter million Minnesotans so Trump can give tax cuts to billionaires” but his administration plans on spending $1.2 billion more to grow Medicaid with zilch savings from fraud protection.
They can’t have it both ways. Either the reforms in H.R. 1 are going to cause massive coverage losses—or they aren’t. The evidence from HF 4546 and MMB’s numbers show that is not going to happen. Something is amiss. Minnesotans deserve honesty, not fearmongering. Program integrity isn’t cruelty; it’s sustainability. Fraud drains resources from those who truly need help. Work requirements and eligibility checks strengthen Medicaid for the vulnerable, rather than letting it balloon unsustainably.
Medicaid enrollees pay for less than one percent of their care costs in premiums, no deductibles and co-pays. However Minnesotans who do actually pay, are paying more to get less. A lot less. Higher premiums. Higher deductibles. Higher co-pays. More out of network costs. More rejected prescriptions and treatments. Klobuchar and Walz have worked to systematically replace the best health care in America with a Soviet-style system that crushes those who pay for insurance with sky-high costs for less access to care. Minnesota deserves to know what happened to their health care before it’s too late to get it back.
