President Donald Trump‘s administration sought to tamp down confusion over Medicaid funding in the wake of Office of Management and Budget director Matthew Vaeth’s memorandum pausing federal grant funding.
“The White House is aware of the Medicaid website portal outage,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on X after wrapping up her first press briefing on Tuesday. “We have confirmed no payments have been affected — they are still being processed and sent. We expect the portal will be back online shortly.”
Earlier in the day, Democratic lawmakers complained that despite White House assurance that direct payments to individuals wouldn’t be affected, their state Medicaid portals were taken down.
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“Multiple states locked out of Medicaid portal. This is a Trump shutdown, except this time it’s unlawful,” said Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz (D).
“Can confirm. Connecticut’s Medicaid payment system has been turned off. Doctors and hospitals cannot get paid. Discussions ongoing about whether services can continue,” chimed in Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT).
Florida progressive Rep. Maxwell Frost also took to X to complain about Medicaid not working in Florida.
“Just confirmed that the Trump administration shutdown the Medicaid portal for Florida. There are over 3.8 MILLION Floridians on Medicaid,” Frost wrote.
During the Tuesday press briefing, Leavitt claimed that the funding freeze was not meant to affect payments to individuals but instead give the Trump administration time to evaluate federal spending and eliminate waste.
“This is not a blanket pause on federal assistance and grant programs from the Trump administration,” Leavitt said.
“I want to make that very clear to any Americans who are watching at home, who may be a little bit confused about some of the media reporting this administration,” she later said. “If you are receiving individual assistance from the federal government, you will still continue to receive that, however, it is the responsibility of this President and this administration to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars.”
Some Republicans defended the Trump administration’s actions in interviews with reporters.
“This shouldn’t surprise anyone this administration wants to take a look at spending,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY). “They’ve clarified today at the press conference in the White House and Sen. John Thune did, as well as at the stakeout, that it doesn’t apply to individuals. It doesn’t apply to Social Security, Medicare, SNAP programs, all of those things they want to look at general spending.”
Barrasso also claimed that state Medicaid portals should not have been taken down but conceded that some states “may have been misled.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) also reiterated the line that certain government funding programs that directly help Americans won’t see a freeze.
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“They have taken some things off the table, some of you have specifically asked about programs, programs that directly impact an individual, Medicaid, SNAP, those types of programs are unimpacted by this,” said Thune.
Still, some Democratic lawmakers were unimpressed.
“The White House claims, or tried to claim, that Medicaid isn’t impacted,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH). “But let’s be clear, we are hearing from Medicaid offices all across the country that they are, right now, locked out of the critical Medicaid computer world that allows them to draw down funds. They are locked out of these federal reimbursement systems, which, in practice, means that federal funds can be posted or rejected.”