Trump/GOP "Big Beautiful Bill" Moves The U.S. Closer To "Medicare For All"

Republicans have never liked the federal government helping Americans get health insurance. They opposed both Medicare and Medicaid during the Johnson administration. They also opposed the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obamacare) during the Obama administration.

The reason they opposed all these programs is that they don't consider health care to be a right. They consider it a product to be sold to those who can afford it. 

And they are adamantly opposed to a public option for health insurance - like a Medicare For All program. They claim that would be socialized medicine (even though conservatives in other developed democracies support their government help to get health insurance in their own countries). 

So it was not a surprise that to give the rich more tax cuts in their "Big Beautiful Bill", the Republicans cut off the help to purchase health insurance under Obamacare. This made it impossible for millions of Americans to afford to buy private insurance - and added millions of Americans to the number that don't have any kind of health insurance.

In that same bill, they also cut the number of Americans who could qualify for Medicaid (although they made sure it wouldn't start until after the Midterm elections). When this provision kicks in early next year, it will add millions more Americans to the ranks of the insured.

There was already about 10% of the U.S. population that was not covered by Obamacare, private insurance (which they could not afford), medicare, or Medicaid. The Republican cuts to Obamacare and Medicaid adds millions more. That's a significant portion of the population that has no health insurance (and therefore lacks access to proper and timely medical care).

The Republicans celebrated the cuts to health insurance, but they may soon regret that. I believe those cuts could have the unintended consequence of doing more people to accepting the idea of Medicare For All. Certainly, the millions of Americans that don't have any health insurance would love to have a public option for insurance they could afford.

And private companies have already said that insurance prices will rise again next year, which could force more people out of the insurance market.

Most working Americans are covered in health insurance provided by their employer. But that is getting more expensive also. Some employers are now expecting employees to bear some of the cost and others are giving their employees policies with very high deductibles (which the employee must pay). Other employers are dropping the insurance altogether, and just providing a stipend for the employee to buy private insurance. 

It won't be long before employers realize that paying a tax for government health cares much cheaper than trying to provide private insurance.

That all means the time is now ripe for a Medicare For All program - or at least a viable public option for those who cannot afford private insurance. And the Republican BBB cuts are helping to push the country toward that (even though that is not what they intended).

Voters Don't Want Most Government Programs Cut

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between November 21st and 24th of a nationwide sample of 1,511 registered voters, with a 3 point margin of error.

 

U.S. Public Overwhelmingly Opposes The GOP Cuts To Public Broadcasting

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between July 18th and 21st of a nationwide sample of 1,729 adults (including 1,551 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.4 points for adults and 3.1 points for registered voters. 

The Trump Administration Is Making Weather Disasters Worse

As I write this the tragedy of the flooding in Kerr County (Texas) continues to get worse. At least 109 people were killed by the flash flooding and another 160 or so are still missing. The final death toll is going to be unbelievably horrific.

Donald Trump seemed to shrug it off, saying it was one of those once in a century events. That's reminiscent of Jone Ernst's statement that everyone is going to die. Or the thoughts and prayers the GOP offer because nothing can be done about gun violence. 

Maybe 20 or 30 years ago this would have been a once in a century event, but not today. Today, we seem to be experiencing these weather disaster far more often - and we know why. Our climate is changing. And we know the reason why it is changing - because to the massive overuse of fossil fuels.

As the chart above shows, the American people understand this, even if the Republicans in our federal government won't admit it. About 84% understand that climate change is due wholly or at least partially to human action. And about 55% know the government is not doing enough to solve the problem.

In fact, the Trump administration is actively trying to make the situation worse. He withdrew us from the Paris Climate Accords and is pushing for more oil and gas drilling. The bill just passed and signed into law would not only give subsidies for Big Oil, but would open government lands for more drilling. It also cuts funding and tax breaks for renewable energy and electric vehicles. These measures will make sure this nation (which is the leaders in fossil fuel burning) will not make any progress on solving the global climate change problem.

It gets even worse. While making climate change worse, the government is also stymying efforts to warn citizens of the increasing weather disasters it causes. Thanks to the DOGE cuts, the Weather Service is critically understaffed across the nation. The San Angelo and San Antonio government weather service (the closest to the Kerr County flooding disaster) were only staffed at 50% of pre-DOGE levels. And the position that was designed to make sure weather warnings actually reached the people needing them was not filled (thanks to the person in it being retired early by DOGE).

The Republicans are wrong when they say lives can't be saved and nothing can be done. We would save lives by fully and adequately addressing global climate change. We would save lives by fully funding the government weather service. And we would save lives by helping communities afford necessary rely warning systems. And we would save lives by restoring the cuts made to Medicaid and the ACA>

Trump and his GOP cohorts are so worried about cutting government that they are ignoring the good things that government can and must do for citizens - especially when it involves saving lives.

The DOGE Cuts Have Made Weather Disasters More Dangerous

 

The Republicans Will Regret Drastically Cutting Medicaid

The following post is by Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman: 

If the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — which is, incredibly, the legislation’s actual name — goes into effect, Medicaid will be cut by around a trillion dollars over the next decade. 

What is Medicaid? Like Medicare, it’s government-provided health insurance. But unlike Medicare, it’s “means-tested”: your income has to fall below a certain level before you’re eligible. This makes Medicaid a program for the poor or near-poor — and that, for many on the right, suggests a political opportunity.

Ostensibly, the right attacks Medicaid because it costs too much. I mean, it’s a government program, which means that it must be riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse, right? And surely there must be millions of lazy people getting health care through Medicaid who should be getting up off their couches and going to work.

The reality is that none of this is true.

No doubt there’s waste and fraud in Medicaid, as there is in any system created and run by human beings. But overall Medicaid provides essential health care relatively cheaply. Once you adjust for the relatively poor health of the average Medicaid recipient — chronic illness can make you poor! — Medicaid appears to have significantly lower costs than private insurance:

Actually, in some ways Medicaid resembles the health care systems of other advanced countries, which are much cheaper than U.S. health care (while achieving equally good results) largely because they’re more cost-conscious, willing to bargain hard with drug companies, say no to expensive procedures of dubious medical benefit, and so on.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of Medicaid recipients either are working or can’t work — they’re disabled or need to stay home to care for others:

Oh, and one thing we know from repeated experience is that adding work requirements to Medicaid does not, in fact, lead to more people working.

I don’t know how many of the right-wingers clamoring for drastic Medicaid cuts believe the stories they tell about waste and lazy Americans who won’t get a job. My guess, though, is that they don’t care whether these stories are true. They’re going after Medicaid because they see it as a soft target — a program that helps lower-income Americans, and who cares about them? Medicaid’s beneficiaries, they imagine, are the new welfare queens driving Cadillacs.

But a funny thing has happened to public opinion about Medicaid. The share of Americans covered by the program has increased a lot over the past 15 years:

And the fact that so many Americans now receive Medicaid means that many peoplehave either benefited from the program or know people who have. And as a result the program has become remarkably popular:

83 percent favorability — 74 percent among Republicans! — is incredibly high. In fact, Medicaid appears to have slightly higher favorability than apple pie.

What this suggests is that Republicans who consider Medicaid a soft target, a program that only benefits inner-city rats, are going to be shocked by the blowback if they do manage to eviscerate this key piece of American health care.

The Public Is Unhappy About Proposed Cuts To Medicaid

 

The charts above are from a survey done by the Kaiser Family Foundation between May 5th and 26th of a nationwide sample of 2,539 adults, with a 3 point margin of error.

Speaker Chooses To Lie About The Budget Bill (Since He Can't Justify It)

 

Speaker Johnson appeared on Meet The Press last weekend. It was obvious that he would be asked about the "big, beautiful" budget bill recently passed by the Republican-controlled House a few days ago. 

He couldn't justify the cruelty of the bill, so he instead chose to LIE about it. 

He said the bill does not cut Medicaid. That was a lie. The bill substantially cuts Medicaid - and those cuts will result in millions of Americans losing the only health insurance they had. It will also likely result in the closing of many rural hospitals, since they depend on that Medicaid to pay their bills.

He said the bill does not cut SNAP (food benefits for the poor). That was a lie. The bill does cut SNAP benefits - and will result in millions who need that benefits having it cut or completely eliminated. The bill literally takes food out of the mouths of poor children.

He said the bill does not add to the national debt. That was a lie. By continuing tax cuts (mainly to the richest Americans), it will add at least $4 trillion to the national debt - maybe much more.

These are not the opinions of some left-wing group. They are facts provided by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Facts that Johnson and his GOP colleagues chose to ignore.

Public Opposes The Trump/GOP Cuts To The IRS

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between May 16th and 19th of a nationwide sample of 1,710 adults (including 1,558 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.2 points for adults and 2.9 points for registered voters.
 

Tax Cuts For The Rich And Benefit Cuts For The Vulnerable

 

The chart and conclusion above are from the Economic Policy Institute.

Musk/DOGE May Be Costing As Much As It Saves

 

The following is part of an article by Zeeshan Aleem at MSNBC:

We’ve watched as DOGE chief Elon Musk’s promised pot of savings from his “efficiency” operation has shrunk from $2 trillion to $1 trillion to what he now claims is $150 billion, or 7.5% the amount initially promised. Now new estimates suggest that the way Musk has gone about his cost-cutting crusade might cost nearly as much as — if not more — than what he claims to have saved taxpayers.

As The New York Times reports, DOGE hasn’t been cheap for the federal government:

The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization that studies the federal work force, has used budget figures to produce a rough estimate that firings, re-hirings, lost productivity, and paid leave of thousands of workers will cost upward of $135 billion this fiscal year. At the Internal Revenue Service, a DOGE-driven exodus of 22,000 employees would cost about $8.5 billion in revenue in 2026 alone, according to figures from the Budget Lab at Yale University.

Put those two figures together and you’re approaching $145 billion in costs. And that’s not counting, as the Times notes, the legal fees the federal government is incurring to defend against dozens of lawsuits contesting DOGE’s authority. . . .

The estimates raise serious questions about DOGE's net savings — and that’s assuming Musk’s quoted savings numbers are reliable, which they often haven’t been. Moreover, the estimated lost revenue from the IRS cuts would be a recurring phenomenon. Musk’s degrading of the administrative state and social services while potentially saving nothing helps underscore how scammy the DOGE enterprise, and sheds light on how this whole operation is at its core not about fiscal discipline.

Musk and his team were perversely creative in devising ways to fire workers en masse. But as a group of cocky political outsiders who confused speed with efficiency, they weren’t equipped to anticipate the legal restrictions on what they could do. Their rash approach has resulted in lots of rehiring and back pay for people wrongly fired — and lost productivity along the way. Musk and his team put their faith in a kind of “shoot first, ask questions later” strategy, but that resulted in administrative whiplash. “Accidentally” canceled programs have had to be re-assembled. And blanket firings of “probationary workers” resulted in the squandering of expensive hiring and training processes for hyperspecialized positions that could cost up to $1 million for positions like spies, the Times notes.There is a possibility that Musk is delivering the opposite of taxpayer savings — a worse government at roughly the same cost.Social Security is under siege, foreign aid has been eviscerated, and the IRS is less equipped to stop tax cheats (which in turn means less government revenue). But, according to the estimates reported by the Times, no significant sum of money is being saved, and there’s no way the “savings” from what we’ve seen so far will net out to massive “DOGE checks” for the American public.

The Trump Administration Is Devastating Programs That Help Children

The following is just a tiny part of an excellent article by Eli Hager at Propublica.org:

The clear-cutting across the federal government under President Donald Trump has been dramatic, with mass terminations, the suspension of decades-old programs and the neutering of entire agencies. But this spectacle has obscured a series of moves by the administration that could profoundly harm some of the most vulnerable people in the U.S.: children.

Consider: The staff of a program that helps millions of poor families keep the electricity on, in part so that babies don’t die from extreme heat or cold, have all been fired. The federal office that oversees the enforcement of child support payments has been hollowed out. Head Start preschools, which teach toddlers their ABCs and feed them healthy meals, will likely be forced to shut down en masse,some as soon as May 1. And funding for investigating child sexual abuse and internet crimes against children; responding to reports of missing children; and preventing youth violence has been withdrawn indefinitely.

The administration has laid off thousands of workers from coast to coast who had supervised education, child care, child support and child protective services systems, and it has blocked or delayed billions of dollars in funding for things like school meals and school safety.

These stark reductions have been centered in little-known children’s services offices housed within behemoth agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice, offices with names like the Children’s Bureau, the Office of Family Assistance and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. In part because of their obscurity, the slashing has gone relatively overlooked.

“Everyone’s been talking about what the Trump administration and DOGE have been doing, but no one seems to be talking about how, in a lot of ways, it’s been an assault on kids,” said Bruce Lesley, president of advocacy group First Focus on Children. 

Why Musk Couldn't Find A Trillion Dollars To Cut

 

Trump Is Responsible For The Cuts - Musk Is Just The Front Man

Deep cuts have been made to the federal government, and more are on the way. Foreign aid has virtually been eliminated. Veterans benefits have been cut. Education jobs have been cut, and we are told the entire department is to be closed down. Social Security has had job cut and many Social Security offices are to be closed. The CDC has been gutted.

Elon Musk is being blamed for the cuts, and the American people are growing angry. His popularity has taken a significant hit, and Tesla has seen a large drop is sales and its stock market price. This is understandable, but it ignores the real culprit - Donald Trump.

Donald Trump has always been a micromanager. This was true when he was in the business world. Nothing happened at Trump's businesses that did not have prior approval of Trump. The same thing is true in his current administration. It's just in his nature to micromanage.

Elon Musk is just the front man for the agency cuts. It gives Trump a little cover for the unpopular cuts - and if the cuts become very unpopular with voters, which seems likely now, then Musk will be the one to get the blame. He will be the fall guy (much a Cohen was is Trump criminal venture in the 2016 election).

Don't be fooled! Musk is getting the bad publicity for the cuts, but none of those cuts would have happened if Trump didn't want them to happen. As with his businesses, Trump had prior knowledge and approved them. That's just the way he operates.

46% Says Agency Cuts Have Gone Too Far - 17% Say Not Far Enough

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between March 16th and 18th of a nationwide sample of 1,618 adults (including 1,458 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.4 points for adults and 3.3 points for registered voters.
 

Musk's Attack On Social Security Is Dishonest And Cruel

 Trump said he would not come after Social Security. He lied. His henchman, Elon Musk, is in the process of seriously damaging Social Security. The following is part of a post by economist Paul Krugman:

We often think of Social Security as a retirement program, which it is; most Social Security beneficiaries achieve that status simply by reaching retirement age. But the program also helps Americans with disabilities that prevent them from working or limit their ability to work, and for millions of people these benefits are a crucial lifeline.

Now the Social Security Administration, following orders from Elon Musk’s DOGE, appears set to subject disabled Americans to immense hardship. And everything we know indicates that this act of cruelty is mainly motivated by a combination of ego and spite.

The story so far: On March 12 the Washington Post reported that the Social Security Administration was considering ending phone service for Americans filing retirement or disability claims. The SSA quickly backed off that idea — sort of. The day after the Post report, however, the agency circulated an internal memo — acquired by the newsletter Popular Information — laying out a plan that would be almost equally destructive.

Under this plan, beneficiaries would still be able to call the SSA. But they would have to verify their identity either over the internet or through in-person visits to field offices.

Bear in mind that we’re talking about older and/or disabled Americans, many of whom are unable to access the internet and physically unable to visit SSA offices — which would in any case be overwhelmed by the increased traffic, given that the agency is already facing large staffing cuts. So this would be a move of almost cartoonish cruelty, and a nightmare for millions of Americans.

Why do this? The alleged justification is to combat fraud. But ProPublica has acquired audio of a closed meeting held with Leland Dudek, the Social Security Administration’s acting administrator, in which he acknowledged that fraudulent benefit claims are not, in fact, a serious problem.

So what the Musk is going on here? This plan would save some money, not by eliminating fraud, but by effectively cutting off aid to Americans who are legally entitled to that aid, and specifically those who need it most. But I don’t think the savings are the point.

My guess, instead, is that it’s an ego thing, that Social Security has become to Musk what Canada has become to Donald Trump. Both men at one point said something stupid, something that would have turned them into laughingstocks if there weren’t so much fear in the air. But both men have been unable to let go, doubling down in what amounts to an attempt to redeem their initial foolishness. . . .

Musk’s big blooper was his claim that millions of dead people are receiving Social Security checks. This claim probably reflected the failure of young Musk staffers — what Dudek called the “DOGE kids” — to understand how the SSA’s databases work, combined with a complete lack of common sense. I mean, if there really were huge numbers of dead people receiving Social Security payments, don’t you think someone else would have noticed?

In a normal political environment, getting something that big that wrong would have destroyed Musk’s credibility and led to his permanent exile from any role in setting policy. But this is America in 2025, so Trump amplified the already-refuted claim when addressing Congress, and Musk seems more powerful than ever.

Furthermore, Musk refuses to give up his Social Security smears, making the completely implausible claim that fraudulent use of Social Security numbers accounts for 10 percent of federal spending. And I’d argue that that the plan to effectively cut off many disabled Americans is best seen as part of a desperate effort to find or pretend to find Social Security fraud, retroactively justifying Musk’s big mistake.

Still, does the plan have to be this cruel to the most vulnerable Americans? As I see it, the cruelty is a feature, not a bug.

After all, gratuitous, seemingly gleeful cruelty has been a hallmark of DOGE’s operations. Even if you think DOGE’s mass layoffs — some quickly reversed when it turned out that critical workers were fired — make sense, think of the way they are being carried out. In general, workers are being fired with no warning, no chance to make plans for the future, and often face insulting (and false) claims that they were poor performers.

It's hard to escape the sense that DOGE staffers are actually enjoying this. And why not? We’re mostly talking about poorly socialized young men suddenly given the power to ruin other people’s lives, taking their cues from a leader who has declaredthat “the fundamental weakness of Western society is empathy.” So why should we be surprised that the DOGE kids’ rampage through the government looks more and more like a remake of Lord of the Flies?

There will, I expect and hope, be a huge backlash if the plan to effectively cut off millions from benefits goes through. But don’t count on Musk — or Trump — to change course. These are men with fragile egos, who never, ever admit being wrong.