Americans Refuse To Quietly Let Republicans Kill Medicaid, People On Medicaid
The nerve and gall!
The House Energy and Commerce Committee got to work yesterday on its part of the One Big Beautiful Blowjobs for Billionaires Bill, in which they’ve been instructed to cut $880 billion over the coming decade. That means huge cuts to Medicaid, in the neighborhood of $700 billion, no matter how much Republicans fib about how they’ll simply cut out “waste, fraud, and abuse” or crack the whip on “able-bodied childless adults” who are just lazy.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that cuts on that scale would “reduce the number of people with health insurance by at least 8.6 million” across America, and there’s no way such numbers constitute only those mythical layabouts. Nevertheless, the dishonest talking point persists.
Almost as soon as the committee’s “markup session” on the bill began in the Rayburn Office Building, it was interrupted by protesters, many of them using electric wheelchairs, chanting “No cuts to Medicaid!” Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Kentucky), the committee chair, warned that the protest was illegal and “a criminal offense,” but the protesters seemed to think their own lives and health mattered enough that they’d continue their civil disobedience. Twenty-five of the protesters were arrested and removed; Eric Michael Garcia, a reporter for the Independent, said that as one protester was being hauled out of the hearing room by Capitol Police, she yelled (presumably at Republicans on the committee, not the cops) “you will kill me!” and “Bullshit! Liar!”
Fact check: true.
Here’s video of the protest in the hall outside the hearing room:
During the markup session, Democrats spoke up on behalf of their constituents who have every reason to fear losing Medicaid, which currently provides healthcare for one in five Americans.
One by one, they held up photographs of people who they said could lose Medicaid under the GOP plan.
Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., introduced the committee to George, a six year old with Down syndrome, whose family traveled to the markup from Michigan. Dingell read a letter from George’s mom saying that it’s “a huge fear that we lose Medicaid, because it’s necessary for our family’s lives.”
Dingell was interrupted by Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), who oozed that he was “sorry that people have lied to you,” and pretended to reassure the little boy, “George, I want to tell you, you have nothing to worry about. Your Medicaid is not going anywhere.” Again, the scope of the cuts the bill is likely to include suggest otherwise.
The word “lying” itself became part of the markup debate, with Guthrie permitting Republicans to say Democrats were lying about how big the cuts would be, but prohibiting Democrats from saying Great Leader is lying when he says he will protect Medicaid. The New York Times notes, with no irony, that “An informal agreement to simply avoid using the word ‘lie’ altogether for the remainder of the session fell apart a few hours later.” After eight hours, the committee still hadn’t started writing up the actual Medicaid portion of the bill; they finally got to that stuff well after midnight,
The bill will also institute nationwide work requirements for Medicaid — you know, for all those alleged able-bodied adults who are lazy — even though studies consistently show that — let’s shout it again — two-thirds of of adults receiving Medicaid already work, and nearly three in ten would qualify for exemptions from work requirements “because of caregiving responsibilities, illness or disability, or due to school attendance[.]”
Beyond that, the research also shows that work requirements don’t move people off assistance and into full-time work, but they do create higher costs for the programs and throw people off benefits because of paperwork fuckups, not because of real ineligibility. And who’d have guessed it, kicking people off benefits doesn’t turn them into can-do go-getters, it just increases poverty and illness.
The Times notes that the work requirements are mostly modeled on those put in place in Georgia, which have “resulted in low enrollment and high administrative costs.” Also, for shits, giggles, and votes in swing states, the work requirements wouldn’t kick in until after the 2028 presidential elections, if any; that made some Republicans mad because the Big Big Savings from throwing people off their benefits would be delayed too long. To bring in a little extra money to offset tax cuts needed by billionaires, the bill would also require new co-pays for Medicaid patients, too, because it’s time they pull their weight so that the rich can coast.
And just in case the work requirements don’t kick out enough people, the bill will add even stricter requirements on paperwork to qualify for Medicaid, creating more traps that should prevent people from getting healthcare, as God wants.
Despite not working, those work requirements remain immensely popular on the Right, since they feel like a way to keep the Unworthy Poor from whooping it up. Just today, four Trump appointees, including HHS Secretary Poopswimmer and Medicare and Medicaid overseer Dr. Oz, have their names on a New York Times op-ed with the whip-cracking headline, “Trump Leadership: If You Want Welfare and Can Work, You Must.” (No gift link, because fuck those guys; you already know what they’ll say anyway).
Update: Oh, yeah, they also explain that kicking more and more people off their healthcare (or out of nutrition or housing programs) is “about opportunity. We believe that work is transformative for the individual who moves from welfare to employment.”
If that sounds a little familiar, it’s because in Trump’s first term, he literally rolled a program to slash Medicaid and turn it into block grants with the name “Healthy Adult Opportunity.” Remember folks, like the baddies in a slasher flick, bad Republican ideas never die.
In conclusion, we hope people stay active, engaged, and loud, and if it’s possible to exhume John McCain’s thumb, maybe that might help too.
[Mother Jones / NBC News / NYT / KFF / Robert Wood Johnson Foundation / NYT)
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I'm already anticipating the Twitter Community Note on this one: "The Republican Medicaid cuts do not specify that anyone must die."
Just updated with a little thing I'd forgotten, refresh browser to see update at end of article.