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The Senate Budget Committee unveiled a budget resolution Wednesday that could pave the way to less draconian cuts in health programs than House lawmakers previously proposed. The Senate proposal includes the House's earlier recommendations that could lead to billions in health program cuts — but it also includes instructions for the Senate to go a different route while renewing tax cuts passed during President Donald Trump's first term. (McAuliff, 4/2)

The Trump administration and Republicans broadly have said they can cut Medicaid’s budget without hurting patient care by finding efficiencies. Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette, the top Democrat on a key health care panel, says that’s not so. “We just simply don’t have that much money,” DeGette said at POLITICO’s Health Care Summit Wednesday. (Reader, 4/2)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: ‘If They Cut Too Much, People Will Die’: Health Coalition Pushes GOP On Medicaid Funding

Tina Ewing-Wilson remembers the last time major Medicaid cuts slashed her budget. In the late 2000s, during the Great Recession, the pot of money she and other Medi-Cal recipients depend on to keep them out of costly residential care homes shrank. The only way she could afford help was to offer room and board to a series of live-in caregivers who she said abused alcohol and drugs and eventually subjected her to financial abuse. She vowed to never rely on live-in care again. (Mai-Duc, 4/3)

A bipartisan trio in the Senate unveiled a proposal Wednesday to require schools to offer nondairy milk options at lunch to accommodate students who are lactose intolerant or have other dietary restrictions. The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) has long required school lunches to include milk on all trays in order for schools to be reimbursed for the meals. (Fortinsky, 4/2)