Boebert, Evans Yelled at by "Furious" Constituents Over Medicaid Cuts in Big Beautiful Bill

United States Representatives Lauren Boebert and Gabe Evans are back from Washington, D.C., a week after they helped pass President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act through the House. They didn't get a very warm welcome in Denver.

Boebert and Evans were drowned out by screams and boos from protesters during their Denver press conference celebrating the bill's progress on Thursday, May 29. Around fifty people gathered outside the State Capitol Building, armed with signs and chants condemning the Republicans for supporting the bill because of its impact on Medicaid.

If made law, the 1,000-plus-page bill would make numerous sweeping changes, including cutting trillions of dollars in taxes, raising the national debt limit and enhancing border security. It would help fund these endeavors by massively scaling back safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP.

"My son will die without Medicaid," says protester Dawn Caldwell, a Highlands Ranch resident in Boebert's district whose son is special needs. "This will make life almost impossible for most people with disabilities."

An estimated 10.3 million people would lose Medicaid coverage by 2034 under the proposed plan, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That would include sudden loses in coverage for between 140,000 and 230,000 Coloradans, impacting 11 to 18 percent of the state's current Medicaid participants, based on state estimates.

The bill would require Medicaid recipients to prove their eligibility every six months instead of once per year — a process that is already lengthy and complex, Caldwell says. To qualify for Medicaid for her 24-year-old son (who is legally blind, nonverbal, epileptic and has triplegic cerebral palsy), Caldwell says she has to go through the county, state and federal systems, at times "scrambling for weeks or months" to complete the process when one part of the chain fails.

She argues the bill is "adding extra hoops" to push eligible users off Medicaid with excessive bureaucratic burdens, noting that she pays $2,500 per month for private health insurance in addition to Medicaid.

"I fear that these changes will result in my son dying. This is life and death," Caldwell says. "It's doubling all of the work, all of the costs. There's nothing fiscally responsible about doing that. The only reason to do that is to make it impossible for people to stay on Medicaid. ...This will kill so many people, the things that are in this bill." One of the largest changes the bill would make to Medicaid is establishing nationwide work mandates, requiring able-bodied adults without children to work, volunteer or go to school for at least eighty hours per month to qualify for the health-care program. This change would result in around half of the 10.3 million estimated losses in coverage.

Nearly 30 percent of people in Evans's 8th Congressional District are on Medicaid (tying for the second-highest percentage in the state) and around 16 percent of people in Boebert's 4th Congressional District are on Medicaid. The bill passed the House by just one vote on May 22 — 215 to 214 — with both representatives voting yes.

"To come here and celebrate that you're cutting all of these people off of Medicaid is just cruel," Caldwell says. "You're an elected official and this is how you treat your people? I'm furious."

Thursday's protesters repeated chants of "your bill kills," "do your jobs" and "Gabe, you suck" as Evans and Boebert gave their remarks. During a Q&A portion at the end of the press conference, reporters had to shout their questions directly into Evans's ear because they could not be heard over the yells from the crowd, even as they stood at a distance separated by state troopers.

Evans spent most of the press conference focusing on the bill's non-Medicaid aspects, like tax cuts and border security, though he did defend the Medicaid reforms as "a win for Coloradans."

He emphasized a portion of the policy that would cut federal funds to states that provide state-funded health care to undocumented immigrants, as Colorado does. An estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants would lose access to state-funded health care programs by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

"This One Big Beautiful Bill Actually protects Medicaid," Evans said. "We are protecting Medicaid for the people who need it most...preserving these resources so that pregnant women, people with disabilities, medically complex folks, kids, they can actually get the benefits that they deserve without being cut in line by 1.4 million illegal immigrants."

Evans criticized Colorado for being "further left than California," pointing to Governor Gavin Newsom's proposal to freeze enrollment for undocumented immigrants to his state's low-income health insurance program.
Boebert praised another portion of the bill that would ban Medicaid from covering gender-affirming health care services for transgender people, continuing the Republican Party's trend of prioritizing anti-transgender legislation.

"Out-of-touch Democrats in Colorado and D.C. would rather these tax dollars be used to absolutely chop and cut our children and our adults," Boebert said.

She later mocked the protestors as they shouted over her: "I see more order in my home with children than I do with radical leftists," Boebert said. "The tolerant left doesn't seem very tolerant."

Alan Franklin, deputy director of the left-leaning advocacy group ProgressNow Colorado, called the event "a disaster" and "an inflection point" for Evans's political career. Franklin, who was present at the protest, is a Thornton resident and one of Evans's constituents.

"This district is going to punish him for this," Franklin says. "If it's not you, it's someone that you know who's going to be directly impacted by this. Whether they are able to jump through the new hoops that Gabe Evans is putting in front of them to keep their coverage, or they fall through the cracks, they're going to suffer from this decision."

"He got the reaction that he deserved," Franklin adds. "The voters are going to give him this kind of a reception every stop he goes."

Evans's congressional district is one of the most politically competitive in the nation and a key target for Democrats looking to flip control of the House during the 2026 election. Evans, who is serving his first term after beating incumbent Democrat Yadira Caraveo by less than one percentage point in November, is already facing three major Democratic challengers, including Caraveo.

Colorado's Democratic Party and Democratic state legislative caucus released statements on Thursday opposing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The legislative opposition letter was signed by two of Evans's challengers: State Representatives Shannon Bird and Manny Rutinel.

Democratic legislators and local health care providers also held a virtual press conference following Boebert and Evans's event on Thursday. They predicted that cutting Medicaid for Coloradans would increase uncompensated care for safety net providers, financially burdening Colorado's health care system and eventually leading to higher costs for privately insured patients to make up for it.

"This is a step backward for health care," Dr. Steve Federico, a pediatrician and spokesperson for Denver Health, said during the web conference. "Our health care system is already inefficient. Adding more uninsured patients is not the answer."

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is currently awaiting consideration from the Senate.