Welcome to For The Record, the Colorado Times Recorder’s series where you can hear public figures in their own words. We’ll give you the clip and the context, so can listen for yourself.
Many congressional Republicans, including Colorado’s U.S. Representative Gabe Evans, have argued that a Trump-backed budget bill would either not cut Medicaid services, or would only cut waste, fraud, and abuse, claims roundly disputed by experts, as well as the Congressional Budget Office’s own latest figures. But a longtime Colorado Republican leader, who formerly represented a town in Evans’ district in Colorado’s state legislature, recognizes that the bill does cut Medicaid – and he gave the cuts his full-throated support.
“I heard some comments about the Big, Beautiful Bill cutting back on Medicaid,” said former state senator Kevin Lundberg during an interview on KLZ Radio’s The Kim Monson Show on June 10. “That’s because Trump’s trying to break this cycle, this maddening cycle that the government’s got to step in and take care of everybody and everything. And isn’t it ironic that these folks who are saying ‘No Kings for us’ are actually begging to become the serfs of the system?”
During his time in the legislature, Lundberg represented Berthoud, most of which is within the Eighth Congressional District, although he resides just across the line in the Second Congressional District,
Lundberg, who now leads the Republican Study Committee of Colorado and is active in state party politics, acknowledged that a large number of Coloradans, including in Republican districts, benefit from Medicaid, but he still said those benefits should be cut.
“Here in Colorado, somewhere between thirty and forty percent of the population of everybody in the state is on Medicaid, yeah,” Lundberg said, dramatically overstating the number- which is approximately 1.2M Coloradans, or about 22% of the state population. “Should that be cut back? Yes, it should.”
Lundberg went on to claim that Medicaid is being abused by both healthcare providers and patients – because the government pays for the services, but does not give or receive them, he said, “The other parties, the providers and the patients think, well, I guess it’s free money. We’ll just go ahead and spend whatever we can; whatever the government’s dumb enough to give us, we’ll be smart enough to take.”
He concluded by saying it’s unrealistic for the government to provide Medicaid to more than a handful of people, and called on Republicans to take ownership of the cuts as “pulling back” government excess.
“Medicaid is supposed to be for those who are just at the, you know, at the end of their rope, there’s no other financial way to handle their medical costs,” he said. “It was supposed to be that safety net of last resort where just a few people are actually on that roll because the rest of us are out there working and paying our bills and buying our medical insurance, et cetera. But it’s blown up, and we’ve gotta change gears. And we cannot get sucked into this, ‘oh, you’re slicing services.’ No, what you’re doing is you’re pulling back to what might be realistic in the future.”
Listen to the full interview here. Lundberg’s interview begins at 44:45.
