Get ready to be bombarded with ghoulish ads warning about grandmothers dying and children denied needed cancer treatments “just to make billionaires like Elon Musk even richer.”
The ads, paid for by a Democratic PAC, started running Monday. And Monday night Democrats attending President Donald Trump’s speech to Congress held up paddles with the message “Save Medicaid.”
It’s demagoguery in full swing to combat Republican efforts to control federal spending on Medicaid and stabilize the nation’s debt.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is claiming, “House Republicans just voted to rip health care away from up to 1.8 million New Yorkers — all to bankroll giveaways for billionaires.”
Rep. Delia Ramirez (D), from Chicago, shrieks, “People will die.”
These are lies. The needy are not going to lose their health care, and the demagogues know it.
Truth is, congressional Republicans are finally sticking up for working people who resent covering the bills for healthy folks who refuse to work.
To control Medicaid spending, Republicans are calling for a “work requirement” for able-bodied adults without children or an elderly dependent.
“Work” overstates the toughness. Anyone who is employed for 80 hours a month, or attends school, a training program or drug-recovery program and is low income will still be eligible for free care. Just not moochers.
When Medicaid was launched it 1965, it provided a medical safety net for children, young mothers, the disabled and the elderly.
But a decade ago, President Barack Obama and Congress expanded Medicaid to cover healthy, working-age adults, whether they were willing to work or not.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi boasted that everyone should have “the freedom to pursue your own happiness,” as a writer or ”whatever you want to do” — even without having to hold down a job and pay for your health insurance.
That’s hardly a safety net. Pelosi’s promise made working people into patsies supporting the free-loaders.
House Speaker Mike Johnson tweeted last week, “Medicaid is for single mothers with small children who are just trying to make it. It’s not for 29-year-old males sitting on their couch playing video games. We will find those guys, and we will SEND them back to work!”
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the “work” requirement would save $140 billion over the next decade.
Not chump change. It’s almost a tenth of the Republicans’ total budget-reduction goal.
Just as important, requiring “work” indicates that at least some Washington lawmakers are in sync with working-class Americans, who want to be generous to the needy but loathe spongers.
Weeks before Congress began debating how to curb Medicaid spending, state legislators in Ohio, Arkansas, Arizona and Indiana were already sending requests to the Trump administration to approve state-initiated work requirements.
Several states tried this during Trump’s first term, only to be sued in federal court or rebuffed by President Joe Biden’s Medicaid administrators.
The debates in these state capitals show how polarizing work requirements are.
Die-hard lefties argue that the more people who are insured, the better. Never mind who’s paying.
But Republicans say a government program should encourage the dependent to become independent and self-supporting.
They also argue that people who work are healthier than people who don’t.
That is fully supported by copious scientific data cited in the American Behavioral Scientist.
Not working — and the isolation and low self-esteem it produces — can literally kill you.
As for Hochul’s bombast that changes to Medicaid are only being made to bankroll billionaires, the truth is that current federal spending is “unsustainable,” per the nonpartisan General Accounting Office.
Take it from Javier Milei, Argentina’s president, elected one year ago.
He campaigned with a chainsaw, pledging deep cuts to his government’s out-of-control spending.
At that time, his country had one of the highest inflation rates in the world. A year later, inflation is coming down fast.
Republicans aren’t taking a chainsaw to Medicaid, but slowing its spending growth will help deter inflation and allow them to renew Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which are about to expire.
Before 2017, the US was losing 10 multinational corporate headquarters a year to countries with lower corporate taxes.
After Trump’s 2017 cuts, the exodus stopped.
Renewing those corporate tax cuts is essential to save American jobs. Possibly yours.
When you hear the demagogues oppose Medicaid “cuts,” think of the guy sitting on the couch, while you go to work to pay his health-care tab.
Don’t fall for the phony sob stories.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and co-founder of the Committee to Save Our City.
