Trump Is Pushing Millions Of Americans Off Health Insurance

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]There's a lesson here for uh a lot of different people. I'm not a huge fan of the ACA, but there were significant portions of it that were exceedingly important both from a perspective of somebody who wants to have Medicare for all, but also just in terms of like the material benefits of people's lives. And that is the patient protection parts of it where it actually ensured that that private insurance provides certain things and cannot be taken away from you. And the other part was an expansion of Medicaid which uh at its peak which was about a year ago. Um you had haved the number of people between the exchanges US government subsidizing private insurance and Medicaid US government providing uh full medical insurance for people.

[00:00:55]you had haved the number of uninsured Americans, maybe even more than half, uh, from where it was 15 years ago, >> 20 million people got Medicaid under ACA expansion.

[00:01:09]>> And I think prior to that, there was about 40 million uninsured.

[00:01:13]Um, and that has all been unraveled. Number three, millions more people are now uninsured. What are the numbers here specifically around Medicaid?

[00:01:26]>> Right. So Medicaid uh is separate from what I was talking about, but back in the one big beautiful bill, the Republicans carve back all kinds of Medicaid eligibility uh uh definitions.

[00:01:38]And so the consequence when you put the two things together, this is the uh uh impact of these tax credits that I was just talking about. But when you add the one big beautiful bill impact on it, you can see that the number of people who are insured, which peaked back up here at about almost 50 million people in the exchanges thanks to Obamacare, went down, down, down, down, down, all the way down here because of those exchanges that Obamacare set up. Now, it's going to jump back up here, up to 37 million uninsured Americans. That means that we have essentially or we will essentially eliminate half of the people who uh got insurance through Obamacare will be giving it up. So half of Obamacare the Republicans have very quietly eviscerated without ever saying the words Obamacare because that didn't go so well for them in the past. Yeah. Now, obviously, like obviously the Republicans don't give a And uh Republicans um uh it will increase the number of people who die. It will uh emiserate many many people not to have health insurance. It is uh and that is in no way an endorsement of private health insurance. I mean, a lot of that was Medicare uh Medicaid, I should say, uh as well. Um but there's a lesson to be learned here like you know I if uh and it is a very small cohort of people I understand who go on and say like you know um uh we need Medicare for all and I'm not going to vote for a Democrat because the Democratic party has failed to deliver Medic Medicare for all.

[00:03:13]That's true. Um, we do have Democratic candidates who are in for it and I think we're going to probably have more in the Senate uh by the time this year. We're not going to have anywhere near a majority of Democrats and even in the House. I would say like 15 to 20% of people who say they're for Medicare for all are not really. Uh, and we have people like Mallalerie McMurrow who's saying we wouldn't want Medicare for all because the government would be in charge. But understand that when you talk about the thousands of people annually who die from back before Obamacare when we had 45 50 million people uninsured when you talk about the uh annual deaths from that and then you cut that number in half the number of people who have health insurance don't have health insurance and presumably cut the number of people who die in half maybe maybe actually it's even greater than half because you're giving it in Medicaid you're reaching some of the most distressed populations in the country. Understand that when you start to when you kick people though off of Medicaid, people are going to go back up and we're going to have more deaths.

[00:04:20]And so, you know, like this is a a lesson. I'm not uh advocating incrementalism, but understand that there are costs associated with grand political schemes that supposedly going to bring about some type of like blackbox uh imposition of of policies that you want, >> right?

[00:04:41]>> It's about that you have to play defense as well as playing offense. Like like that is just a a crude sports analogy to apply to this. And and also people should keep in mind this is not Donald Trump. This is the Republican party.

[00:04:57]This has been their agenda. They voted 50 times to repeal Obamacare uh before Donald Trump got into office and they were even shut out uh just by a hair uh when he was in the first time. Uh but understand like this is the Republican party and the Democrats need to make this clear. We do not need a strong Republican party to function as a a country. In fact, I think we have seen indisputable evidence that a strong Republican party undermines the health, the the broad-based wealth, the safety, the uh I mean every aspect of life, >> the planet, the the the uh Republicans under Trump have essentially outlawed a hard ban, but more or less have banned in practice wind energy in this country.

[00:05:57]Like how insane is that?

[00:05:59]>> Forcing projects to stop as they're in the middle of in construction. I mean, luckily there hasn't been a recent excursion, you might call it, that has underscored the need for having some sort of domestic energy independence and getting us off fossil fuels, right?

[00:06:16]Nothing like that. Well, there's nothing out there that would suggest that we would need sustainable energy long run uh long-term and midterm. I mean, it's um it's insane. Uh and the Democrats need to make it clear that it's Republicans.

[00:06:33]>> The days of them um their fever breaking is is over.

[00:06:38]>> They and in that big ugly ass bill, they didn't just uh throw millions of people off of their health insurance. They also premiums uh doubled um on average according to analyses of this and also they did the largest cut to food assistance in the history of the program at the same time that they raise health care costs ripped millions of people off of their healthcare as well.

[00:07:07]But what's important is that we build the ballroom and that we give the Pentagon more money.

[00:07:15]>> Oh, speaking of Pentagoning pool, >> yes, the dirt it's filing.

[00:07:21]>> Well, he's painting it blue like they have it at the um Mara Lago >> like at SeaWorld or something. Wasn't the So, wait. So, it's not going to reflect anymore?

[00:07:32]>> Yeah, it will.

[00:07:33]>> Oh, it will.

[00:07:34]I don't know if it's going to still reflect, but it's going to be blue. And that's the important part.

[00:07:40]>> At least it's not gold, but like >> the idea of the reflecting pool is that the Washington monument reflects on it.

[00:07:46]And so, I guess we'll see.

[00:07:48]>> That's all right. You could you could paint it back.

[00:07:52]>> I was never a fan of reflection.

[00:07:56]>> Yeah. Hey folks, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and check out our daily show. We do it every day at 12:00 p.m.

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