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medicaid
'Unfit': Trump Nominates Dr. Oz to Run Medicare
"By nominating RFK Jr. and Mehmet Oz," said one public health expert, "Trump is giving his middle finger to science."
Nov 19, 2024
If confirmed to be the next U.S. secretary of health and human services, anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could be working "closely" with another official who's infamous for his questionable health guidance: Dr. Mehmet Oz, who President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Trump said in a statement that if confirmed, Oz would "cut waste and fraud within our Country's most expensive Government Agency"—a plan that advocates for Medicare said would be carried out by privatizing the healthcare program that serves more than 66 million senior citizens.
As The Lever reported in 2022, Oz aggressively pushed Medicare Advantage plans on his show, The Dr. Oz Show, airing one segment about the insurance agency MedicareAdvantage.com and urging viewers to sign up for the program via a hotline. Insurance companies that offer Medicare Advantage plans are notorious for requiring "prior authorization" for doctors to provide certain medical procedures, subjecting patients to deceptive marketing, and harming senior citizens.
Considering his opposition to traditional Medicare, Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project said Oz "is not a good pick for a very powerful position in charge of a trillion dollars of healthcare spending."
The advocacy group Social Security Works noted that plans to "completely privatize Medicare" are also in Project 2025, the far-right policy agenda that Trump repeatedly tried to distance himself from while campaigning.
"Hands off our earned benefits!" said the group.
With Trump's support, Oz unsuccessfully ran to represent Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate in 2022. The president-elect said Tuesday that if confirmed, Oz would work closely with Kennedy "to take on the illness industrial complex."
Kennedy's proposals for doing so include halting research on drug development, removing teeth-strengthening fluoride from drinking water, and firing Food and Drug Administration employees who have waged a "war on public health" through the "suppression" of the veterinary drug ivermectin and raw milk, which has been associated with disease outbreaks.
Oz has spent years peddling health advice, half of which University of Alberta researchers found to be "baseless or wrong" in a 2014 study published in the British Medical Journal. He promoted a study claiming coffee bean weight loss pills would "burn fat fast for anyone," but the research was later retracted. Oz also claimed that eating certain foods like red onion and endive could reduce a person's cancer risk by up to 75%, leading one paper published in the journal Nutrition and Cancer to assert, "Reality Check: There is no such thing as a miracle food."
Oz has also maintained close ties to multi-level marketing companies that promote products like vitamins with false claims about their ability to treat, cure, or prevent diseases.
"Dr. Oz is unfit to run CMS," said Lawrence Gostin, director of the O'Neill Institute at Georgetown University. "He peddles conspiracy theories on vaccines and fake cures. He profits from fringe medical ideas."
"By nominating RFK Jr. and Mehmet Oz," he added, "Trump is giving his middle finger to science. Having worked for 40 years in public health, it's utterly disheartening."
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Senate Finance Chair Says GOP Push for Medicaid Cuts Spotlights 'Real Trump Agenda'
"The votes are tallied and Trump is headed back to the White House, so his campaign trail populism is over and done with," said Sen. Ron Wyden.
Nov 19, 2024
The Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee said Monday that GOP plans to target Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance to help offset the huge cost of their tax agenda encapsulates the economic agenda of the incoming Republican trifecta led by President-elect Donald Trump, who postured as a working-class champion during the 2024 race.
"You couldn't come up with a better distillation of the real Trump agenda than paying for tax breaks for the rich by gutting Medicaid and increasing child hunger," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a statement after a Washington Postreport detailed internal Republican discussions on a possible Medicaid work requirement, cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and other potential changes to the programs that provide health insurance and food aid to tens of millions of Americans.
"Following through on this plan would cause real hardship and increase the cost of living for millions of working families, but the votes are tallied and Trump is headed back to the White House, so his campaign trail populism is over and done with," said Wyden. "Ultra-wealthy political donors want their massive tax handouts, and as far as Trump and Republicans are concerned, everybody else can go pound sand."
The Trump-led Republican Party has made clear that a new round of tax cuts is at the top of its agenda as it prepares to take control of the House, Senate, and White House in January. In recent weeks, the GOP has discussed using the filibuster-immune reconciliation process to ram tax legislation through Congress before individual provisions of the party's 2017 tax cuts expire at the end of next year.
Trump also campaigned on slashing the corporate tax rate, even as he appealed to working-class voters who aren't reaping the benefits of record corporate profits.
Such tax cuts would likely add trillions to the U.S. deficit, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, leading the GOP to seek out offsets in programs they've long demonized.
"Trump wants to strip healthcare from poor people and increase grocery bills."
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) suggested to reporters last week that Republicans could aim to transform Medicaid's funding structure by instituting block grants—a change that analysts say would likely result in devastating cuts.
Edwin Park, research professor at Georgetown University's Center for Children and Families, wrote Monday that under a block-grant structure, states would "either have to dramatically raise taxes and drastically cut other parts of their budget including K-12 education or, as is far more likely, institute deep, damaging cuts to Medicaid eligibility, benefits, and provider and plan payment rates."
"That includes not just dropping the Medicaid expansion, which covers nearly 20 million newly eligible parents and other adults," Park wrote, "but gutting the rest of state Medicaid programs that serve tens of millions of low-income children, parents, people with disabilities, and seniors."
The Post reported that Republicans are also looking to curb SNAP benefits in the face of a nationwide hunger crisis. According to the latest federal data, 75% of households receiving SNAP benefits live at or below the poverty line and nearly 80% include either a child, an elderly person, or a person with a disability.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote on social media Monday that members of her party "must unite and fight back" against the GOP's push for draconian cuts to SNAP and Medicaid.
"Trump wants to strip healthcare from poor people and increase grocery bills," Warren wrote. "Here's the new Republican plan to pass tax giveaways for Trump's billionaire backers and giant corporations on the backs of struggling Americans."
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) added that "making it even more difficult for people to get healthcare or afford food in order to give tax cuts to the same greedy companies that are driving up healthcare and food costs is disgusting."
"We were elected to serve the American people," wrote Markey, "not feed corporate America's bottom line."
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GOP Targets Medicaid, SNAP Benefits to 'Pay for Tax Cuts for Their Billionaire Donors'
"The GOP wants to make food and healthcare unaffordable and inaccessible for the most vulnerable people in our country," said Rep. Summer Lee. "Make no mistake on who they're serving."
Nov 18, 2024
Congressional Republicans are reportedly considering new work requirements for recipients of Medicaid and nutrition assistance as well as spending caps for the programs as potential ways to counteract the massive cost of their tax agenda, which would primarily benefit the rich and large corporations.
The Washington Postreported Monday that Republicans, who are poised to take full control of the federal government come January, "have begun preliminary discussions about making significant changes to Medicaid, food stamps, and other federal safety net programs to offset the enormous cost of extending" soon-to-expire elements of the regressive tax law that President-elect Donald Trump signed in year one of his first White House term.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated earlier this year that an extension of the 2017 tax cuts would add $4.6 trillion to the U.S. deficit over the next decade. Republicans have made clear that tax legislation is a top priority in the next Congress, and they're preparing to use a fast-track procedure known as reconciliation to ram a new round of tax cuts through.
According to the Post, members of Trump's transition team have discussed with GOP lawmakers and aides the possibility of adding punitive new work requirements and spending caps to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Research and real-world experience have consistently shown that work requirements do virtually nothing to boost employment while making it harder for people in need to receive aid.
"To pay for tax cuts for their billionaire donors, the GOP wants to make food and healthcare unaffordable and inaccessible for the most vulnerable people in our country," Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) wrote in response to the Post's reporting. "Make no mistake on who they're serving."
"We already knew the push to cut taxes for the wealthy next year was going to be costly. Now we're learning that deep cuts to critical programs are on the agenda to help pay for them."
Following an election in which grocery costs were a leading concern of many voters, the Post reported that Republican lawmakers are "discussing stripping presidential authority to recalculate benefits" for SNAP, the nation's highly effective hunger-reducing tool that helps millions afford food each year.
"Republicans argue that if they eliminate that authority and hemmed in SNAP benefits—which increase automatically with inflation—that should count as reducing the deficit by tens of billions of dollars, according to some estimates," the Post noted.
As for Medicaid, the newspaper detailed preliminary GOP discussions to halt Biden administration efforts to help people who lost coverage due to the post-pandemic purge, adding a work requirement similar to SNAP's, and conducting more frequent eligibility checks—which could result in more people losing access to the program.
House Budget Committee Chair Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) openly made the case last week for what he called a "responsible and reasonable work requirement" for Medicaid, the Post observed.
Estimated savings from such changes come nowhere near offsetting the huge projected cost of extending Trump's 2017 tax cuts for individuals and handing additional tax breaks to big corporations. On the campaign trail, Trump proposed reducing the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%, a change that would give the 100 largest U.S. corporations a combined tax cut of $48 billion a year.
Trump's tax agenda would also disproportionately benefit the wealthiest individuals in the U.S. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) released an analysis last month showing that the tax proposals Trump floated during his bid for a second White House term would deliver annual tax cuts to the top 5% and tax hikes for the bottom 95%.
"We already knew the push to cut taxes for the wealthy next year was going to be costly," ITEP wrote on social media Monday. "Now we're learning that deep cuts to critical programs are on the agenda to help pay for them."
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