“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 ...
healthcare
Congress should look to Tennessee as an example for Medicaid reform
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...
Missing in the Republican tax bill: A real answer to the US medical debt crisis
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...
Trump shouldn’t import socialist price controls
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.”
Look to Wisconsin for Medicaid reform
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...
Medicaid cuts will harm rural Republican communities most
Though President Trump promised a “big beautiful” budget bill, what narrowly passed the House of Representatives in the early morning hours of May 22 will be anything but a big beautiful win for millions of marginalized Americans, and Medicaid beneficiaries won’t be the only ones who feel the pinch.
In fact, if passed, this legislation would destabilize the publicly insured and privately insured alike, especially in America’s many rural communities.
Trump’s budget d...
The inconvenient truth about Republican Medicaid fraud claims
Few lines are more central to the congressional Republican leadership’s elevator pitch than the idea that we will get major savings by cutting Medicaid fraud, not Medicaid benefits.
This sales pitch is no small deal to this White House. A president seeking to pass his tax bill with slim congressional majorities could be tanked by a handful of Republicans afraid they’ll lose seats. Those seats could be at risk if Republicans are seen as paying for tax cuts to the...
Medicaid work-requirements are great, but states need flexibility to make them work
I was the first governor to implement work requirements on the working-age population that was on Medicaid. So I feel I have some standing to offer observations on what happened in Arkansas — a few lessons learned and recommendations to Congress as it considers a federal mandate on states to impose work and work-related activities as a condition of Medicaid eligibility.
For a number of reasons, I am firmly in favor of work requirements for able-bodied working-age adults on Med...
Preventative care was a game-changer, but now the Supreme Court could take it away
Amid the Trump administration’s scorched earth approach to governing — which includes threatening hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid funding — a serious threat to health care has gone under the radar. It could undo years of progress toward preventing disease and making Americans healthier and more secure.
In Kennedy v. Braidwood, a case being heard today at the Supreme Court, a lawyer with a long history of attacking fundamental...
Medicaid cuts jeopardize the right to age at home
If you or someone you love wants to age at home — and nearly 90 percent of older Americans do — there’s a number you should know: $2.3 trillion.
That’s how much could be cut from Medicaid under current budget proposals. And while headlines often focus on how these cuts would affect nursing homes, what’s less understood but equally devastating is what they would mean for home-based care.
These cuts would strike at the heart of the support system that allows millions ...