{"id":12195,"date":"2017-06-23T18:37:39","date_gmt":"2017-06-24T01:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=12195"},"modified":"2017-06-23T18:36:12","modified_gmt":"2017-06-24T01:36:12","slug":"american-carnage-or-the-senate-republican-health-care-plan-bradcast-6232017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=12195","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;American Carnage&#8217; (Or, the Senate Republican &#8216;Health Care&#8217; Plan): &#8216;BradCast&#8217; 6\/23\/2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/BradCast_MitchMcConnell_DonaldTrump_062317.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\">On today&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><i>BradCast<\/i><\/a>: Donald Trump repeatedly promised not to cut Medicaid during his Presidential Campaign. During his Inauguration, he vowed to &#8220;end the American carnage&#8221;. Now he&#8217;s prepared to slash Medicaid under the GOP health care legislation, which is certain to create untold &#8220;American carnage&#8221; in its wake. [<i>Audio link to full show follows below.<\/i>]\n<p>Hospitals, doctors and other health care providers have been <a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/healthcare\/339054-healthcare-groups-issue-scathing-criticism-of-senate-bill\">blasting<\/a> the Senate Republicans&#8217; health care bill to replace the Affordable Care Act, or &#8220;Obamacare&#8221;, since the legislation, crafted in secret, was finally <a href=\"https:\/\/nyti.ms\/2sV9uCX\">unveiled<\/a> on Thursday. It has not aged well in the past 24 hours. That&#8217;s for very good reason, as my guest today, <b>IGOR VOLSKY<\/b>, health care reform advocate, a Vice President <a href=\"https:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/about\/staff\/volsky-igor\/bio\/\">at the Center for American Progress<\/a>, and co-host of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/projects\/thinking-cap-podcast\/view\/\"><i>Thinking CAP<\/i><\/a> podcast explains in detail.<\/p>\n<p>Volsky, who we last spoke with during the Democrats&#8217; fight to enact Obamacare back in 2009 and 2010, explains how the GOP plan&#8217;s cuts and restructuring of both the ACA&#8217;s Medicaid expansion <i>and<\/i> the traditional, 52-year old Medicaid program will stifle or end medical care for massive numbers of children and elderly, not to mention the poor.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Medicaid is a program that covers 74 million Americans,&#8221; says Volsky. &#8220;It&#8217;s not just lower income Americans &#8212; who we usually, I think, think of when we talk about Medicaid &#8212; 49% of all births are covered by Medicaid. 64% of <i>all nursing home residents<\/i> have Medicaid coverage. 76% of poor children, 39% of <i>all<\/i> children. So you&#8217;re really talking 20% of Americans rely on Medicaid. The House bill cuts it by about $834 billion. The Senate bill is even worse. Because not only do they go after [Obamacare&#8217;s] Medicaid expansion, but they also cap the [traditional Medicaid] program and change the way its funded by the federal government.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s really going after lower-income and middle-income Americans in a way that we&#8217;ve never seen before,&#8221; he tells me. &#8220;They want to push those folks into private insurance. That&#8217;s really the end goal &#8212; to drown the program over time in the bathtub entirely.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But the GOP&#8217;s scheme will also adversely affect those who receive health insurance via the Obamacare exchanges <i>as well as<\/i> via employers, while giving <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbpp.org\/research\/health\/harsh-tradeoff-at-core-of-gop-health-bill-keep-medicaid-expansion-or-cut-taxes-for\">massive tax cuts<\/a> to a tiny handful of very wealthy families in exchange.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My favorite statistic is that for the 400 richest tax filers, they get a tax cut totaling &#8212; are you ready for this? &#8212; 2.8 <i>billion<\/i> dollars,&#8221; Volsky explains. &#8220;You look at this bill, and it looks like Republicans don&#8217;t think they&#8217;ll ever have to face a fair election ever again.&#8221; Hmmm&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>We also discuss what <i>you<\/i> can do to help derail this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/issues\/healthcare\/news\/2017\/06\/22\/434917\/coverage-losses-senate-health-care-bill-result-18100-27700-additional-deaths-2026\/\">deadly<\/a> plan (among those things, call <i>your<\/i> Senators and otherwise check out the Center&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/TrumpCareToolkit.org\">TrumpCareToolkit.org<\/a> for more info), and which Republican Senators may be in a position to block the scheme together.<\/p>\n<p>Finally then, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest <a href=\"https:\/\/GreenNews.BradBlog.com\"><i>Green News Report<\/i><\/a>, with a bunch of news related to Trump&#8217;s super-genius Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry and much more&#8230;.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\".\/Images\/Speaker_Icon_24.png\" style=\"width: 24px; float: none; vertical-align: middle;\"><span style=\"font-size: 18px; line-height: 18px;\"> <b><i><a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/audio\/BradCast_BradFriedman_GOPSenateHealthcare_IgorVolsky_062317.mp3\">CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!&#8230;<\/a><\/i><\/b><br \/>\n[audio:http:\/\/bradblog.com\/audio\/BradCast_BradFriedman_GOPSenateHealthcare_IgorVolsky_062317.mp3]<\/blockquote>\n<p><center><b>* * *<\/b><\/center><i>While we post <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><\/i>The BradCast<i><\/a> here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they&#8217;re available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-bradcast-w-brad-friedman\/id803467610\">iTunes<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/stitcher.com\/s\/player.php?fid=25838&#038;src=psl\">Stitcher<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/tunein.com\/radio\/The-BradCast-with-Brad-Friedman-p477565\/\">TuneIn<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/podcastgen\/bradcast\/feed.xml\">our native RSS feed<\/a>!<\/i><\/p>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-START--><\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f5f0e0; border:2px solid #6b5a2e; border-radius:6px; padding:10px 14px; text-align:center; font-family:Georgia,serif;\"><span style=\"display:block; margin:0 0 8px 0; color:#3a2e0e; font-size:0.95em; line-height:1.5;\"><strong>The BRAD BLOG<\/strong>, <em>The BradCast<\/em> and <em>Green News Report<\/em> are all 100% independent and 100% listener and reader supported!<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/Donate\" style=\"display:inline-block; background:#6b5a2e; color:#ffffff; padding:6px 18px; border-radius:4px; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:0.9em;\">Please CLICK HERE to help support our work today!<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-END--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On today&#8217;s BradCast: Donald Trump repeatedly promised not to cut Medicaid during his Presidential Campaign. During his Inauguration, he vowed to &#8220;end the American carnage&#8221;. Now he&#8217;s prepared to slash Medicaid under the GOP health care legislation, which is certain to create untold &#8220;American carnage&#8221; in its wake. [Audio link to full show follows below.] [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89,675,543,480,903,479,390,753,200,288,613,477,497,491,126,549,233],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-12195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-appearance","category-bradcast","category-climate-change","category-dean-heller","category-dept-of-energy","category-donald-trump","category-economy","category-electric-vehicles","category-environment","category-health-care","category-irs","category-kpfk","category-mitch-mcconnell","category-rick-perry","category-rights-and-freedoms","category-uk","category-us-senate"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12195"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=12195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}