healthcare

Trump is cutting Medicaid based on a flawed study

Affordable Care Act, healthcare, medicaid, News, Opinion

Our country is poised to take health coverage away from millions of low-income Americans largely based on the findings of a flawed and flagrantly misleading study.

President Trump’s budget reconciliation bill recently produced the largest cut to Medicaid health insurance in its 60-year history.

Claiming to reduce “fraud and abuse,” it will cut essential medical services for at least 12 million low-income people through unachievable work requirements, unaffordable out...

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Obamacare faces a subsidy cliff — don’t bail it out without reform

Affordable Care Act, Donald Trump, healthcare, News, Opinion

The controversy over the 2010 Affordable Care Act dominated Barack Obama’s presidency. The implementation of ObamaCare caused health insurance premiums to soar and nearly collapsed the market entirely. The Biden administration responded by flooding the system with expanded federal subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of 2025.

To stop premiums for older workers with pre-existing conditions from suddenly leaping by $10,000, Republicans will need to extend part of this a...

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Republicans are making boogeymen of their own voters on Medicaid

healthcare, News, Opinion, republican-party

Republicans love their boogeymen; the grotesquely exaggerated villains they use to justify their worst policy ideas. President Trump loves to parade his favorite boogeymen: the “criminal aliens,” the dishonest media, the Democrats, and so on. These dehumanizing caricatures help him rile up his base and lead them to back his cruelest initiatives. 

As the GOP-controlled Congress argues the merits of the cuts included in Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” act — which is deeply&nb...

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Kennedy is gutting health advisory panels to weaken the Affordable Care Act

Affordable Care Act, healthcare, John McCain, News, Opinion

The famous thumbs-down by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2017 resulted in the notorious failure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Subsequent legislative attempts also crashed and burned, teaching Republicans the importance of discretion in their efforts to sabotage that law. 

Consequently, both congressional Republicans and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have instead turned to subtler tactics to undermine the Afford...

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Why Democrats don’t care about most health care fraud 

Affordable Care Act, Democrats, healthcare, medicaid, News, obamacare, Opinion

One thing has become clear in the debate over President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”: Democrats don’t really care about waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid or Affordable Care Act coverage (i.e., ObamaCare). That’s obvious from their opposition to Republican efforts to audit those programs to ensure only eligible people are enrolled. 

To be fair, Democrats do care about health care fraud if a private health insurer or drug company is accused of defrauding a government health...

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Medicaid cuts could save thousands of lives 

healthcare, News, Opinion

“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes,” goes the well-known saying often attributed to Mark Twain. There is no better demonstration of this wisdom than today's falsehoods about Medicaid cuts that are reported, repeated, reposted and retweeted, even as the truth gets but a few eyeballs.  

NBC News recently predicted, “Proposed Medicaid cuts could lead to thousands of deaths.” Other mainstream media claimed similar ...

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Congress should look to Tennessee as an example for Medicaid reform

congress, healthcare, medicaid, News, Opinion

As Congress wrestles with the need to trim spending, attention has turned to Medicaid, and to a lesser extent, Medicare. 

These are hardly new issues. Within seven years of the 1965 enactment of Medicaid, for those eligible for federal income support (largely those in poverty), and Medicare, primarily for those eligible for Social Security, Congress in 1972 turned its attention to concerns about containing costs in those programs.

Tennessee has been a pioneer in mana...

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Missing in the Republican tax bill: A real answer to the US medical debt crisis 

congress, healthcare, News, Opinion

America is drowning in medical debt. It is a reality for nearly one in 12 adults, with at least $220 billion owed nationwide. This burden cuts across income, gender, geography and profession. Medical debt doesn’t care about your politics; it quietly undermines families and the broader economy. Creating targeted tax incentives — both credits and deductions — for consumers should be on the table. 

Whether you cheer or groan, a Republican tax bill, approved by Congress, and signe...

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Trump shouldn’t import socialist price controls 

Donald Trump, healthcare, News, Opinion

Remember when Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump castigated “Comrade Kamala” Harris, then the Democratic nominee, for supporting price controls? It wasn’t that long ago — just last August.  

At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, Trump told the crowd: “In her speech yesterday, Kamala went full Communist ... She wants to destroy our country. After causing catastrophic inflation, Comrade Kamala announced that she wants to institute socialist price controls.” 

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Look to Wisconsin for Medicaid reform

healthcare, News, obamacare, Opinion

Medicaid was created to help people living in poverty have access to health care. Under ObamaCare, it was expanded to include able-bodied, working-age adults without children. That was wrong.

When I was governor of Wisconsin, we opted not to take the expansion. First, we could create our own plan for covering everyone living in poverty. We did — and it worked.

My predecessor had raised the income requirements for Medicaid, but did not fund the gap. That left many imp...

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