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How Democrats use health care alarmism to cling to power



When the sky’s red at night, we’re in for mild weather. When Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, we’re in for six more weeks of winter. And when Democrats start losing, we’re in for a lot of fearmongering about health care.

Rep. Al Green’s (D-Texas) outburst during President Trump’s address to Congress last week was the latest example of Democratic health care alarmism. The Texas congressman waved his cane and shouted that Trump had “no mandate” to cut Medicaid before the sergeant-at-arms escorted him from the floor. The House later censured him for the disruption. Though Green is known for his dramatic antics, this was part of a well-established tradition.

Republicans’ budget resolution is a good step in that direction, but they’ll need to work on their messaging to hold onto their House majority long enough to make a real difference.

In 2017, Republicans controlled the House, Senate, and presidency, positioning them to fulfill their 2010 promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. The proposed American Health Care Act aimed to modify key aspects of the law while preserving others, but it ultimately failed in the Senate.

The Affordable Care Act, signed by President Obama, barred insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or charging them higher premiums. While intended to protect vulnerable patients, the policy led to higher premiums for everyone, including those already struggling to afford health care.

Republicans proposed a different solution: letting the states place people with pre-existing conditions into “high-risk pools,” allowing insurers to charge them high premiums, and providing government subsidies to offset those costs. The chronically ill could access the care they needed without driving up costs for everyone.

More doom, more gloom

This all sounds fairly tame and technocratic, but if you watched Democrats’ campaign ads leading up to the 2018 midterms, you’d get the impression that Donald Trump and then-House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Ohio) had personally executed every cancer-ridden grandma in the country. About half of the party’s ads that cycle focused on health care, especially the issue of pre-existing conditions.

And it worked. Democrats picked up 41 seats, ending Trump’s trifecta.

In 2022, Democrats were polling badly in the lead-up to that year’s midterms. Joe Biden was unpopular, the Afghanistan withdrawal had become a national embarrassment, and inflation was out of control. Right on cue, health care hysteria commenced.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) laid out an 11-point plan for that election cycle, which included a proposal that — in his words — “all federal legislation should sunset in five years” unless Congress repassed it. While this proposal probably wouldn’t have had much effect other than creating more work for Congress, Democrats saw their chance and pounced.

Then-Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) claimed Scott’s proposal would “end Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid.” The Democratic National Committee flooded the airwaves with the same alarmism.

That November, Democrats managed to hold down their losses in the House and even expanded their Senate majority. While it would be an overstatement to attribute their strong performance to health care alarmism alone, it certainly didn’t hurt.

History repeating?

Today, the Democrats find themselves in a similarly precarious situation. Republicans, once again, have a trifecta, and Trump is basking in the best approval ratings of his political career. Democrats have so far failed to marshal an effective resistance or even settle on a cohesive message — so they’re breaking out the old playbook.

Green’s theatrics about proposed Medicaid cuts attracted plenty of attention, but his fellow Democrats are starting to parrot the same talking points. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) recently warned that House Republicans’ plan “could take health care away from up to 25 million Americans.”

In reality, this is just more fearmongering. Advocates of socialized medicine like Wendell Potter, who quit his job as a Cigna executive to shill for single-payer health care, insist that expanding Medicaid is simply “the right thing to do.” Even though ironically, he also explained elsewhere how insurers turn Medicaid into their own personal piggy bank.

Sticking millions of more people on Medicaid — including illegal immigrants, if some Democrats have their way — hurts the very people it’s designed to help. Since Obama raised the eligibility threshold to 138% of the poverty line, the result has been overcrowding, provider shortages, and massive cost overruns.

It would be very convenient if lawmakers could fix American health care by throwing more money at it, but that’s simply not the case. Comprehensive reforms are needed to tackle systemic issues of waste, fraud, and inefficiency.

Republicans’ budget resolution is a good step in that direction, but they’ll need to work on their messaging to hold onto their House majority long enough to make a real difference. Otherwise, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) will ride a blue wave of health care alarmism straight to the speaker’s chair in 2026.

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‘Waste, fraud, and abuse’ hype masks the real issue: Entitlement bloat



It’s the oldest trick in Republicans' playbook: They campaign on cutting spending and shrinking government, but when it comes time to pass actual legislation, they increase spending instead. To distract from that reality, they point to “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Listen closely to all the hype about the DOGE — the Elon Musk-inspired, unofficial Department of Government Efficiency — and you’ll find nobody proposing to eliminate or structurally reform any major programs. Instead, leaders are giving Americans the impression that we can solve our inflation and debt crisis by trimming foreign aid, selling vacant buildings, and slashing overpayments in programs where waste and fraud are features, not bugs. This time must be different.

Cute messaging about egregious wasteful spending, which offends no corporate or individual constituency, will not solve the current crisis.

On the upside, an unprecedented conservative media campaign, led by Musk, has spotlighted wasteful spending and the need for cuts. On the downside, despite all the social media buzz, no one has presented a serious plan to reduce, eliminate, or restructure the key programs driving deficits and inflation. In fact, in December's budget bill, Musk and Donald Trump backed an additional $110 billion in deficit spending without using any so-called wasteful programs as offsets.

Recycling the idea of cutting “waste, fraud, and abuse” — “no, really this time!” — might have worked before the $7 trillion COVID-19 debt bomb. But it won’t dent the $1.2 trillion in annual money printing needed to service the debt’s interest. Telling Americans we can achieve fiscal solvency simply by cutting painless waste, reducing foreign aid, or making government more “efficient” sets us up for failure.

The only way to curb inflation is to level with Americans about the real source of the problem: consensus spending by both parties, not the “waste, fraud, and abuse” they keep blaming. Either we cut those programs or accept inflation — no middle ground. The silver lining is that inflation’s bite has created a mandate to make a trade-off: We can end dependency on certain programs if we muster the political will.

We don’t need an AI tool or a latter-day Manhattan Project to figure out how to balance the budget. We already know what must be done; the challenge lies in devising the right messaging and political will to enact it.

The federal budget isn’t a mystery. According to the Congressional Budget Office, fiscal year 2025 will bring another $2 trillion deficit, with $7 trillion in spending and $5 trillion in revenue — and that’s before factoring in any expansion of Donald Trump’s first-term tax cuts. The CBO projects $1.1 trillion in interest on the debt, but those figures have repeatedly been revised upward.

The 10-year outlook appears even bleaker, especially once we factor in the CBO’s unrealistic revenue projections, its consistent underestimates of spending, and its failure to account for major catastrophes — such as COVID-19, the Great Recession, or annual weather disasters — that always push deficits beyond expectations. For example, while the CBO estimates the $7 trillion budget will only rise to $10.3 trillion by the end of the 10-year window, our spending has already doubled over the past decade, largely because of COVID-19.

What, then, drives our $7 trillion budget for fiscal 2025? Let’s break down the major government expenditures.

The “untouchables” of our budget make up the overwhelming majority of the tab. Social Security, Medicare, military, and veterans’ programs (both discretionary and mandatory), plus interest on the debt, total more than $5.2 trillion of the $7 trillion budget. Several hundred billion dollars of Medicare is offset by user premiums, bringing the net “untouchable” spending closer to $5 trillion. Yes, one could shave off some Pentagon waste and address Social Security and Medicare overpayments, but tightening eligibility would spark a political backlash that Trump may not want.

No hidden stockpile of “waste, fraud, and abuse” exists to eliminate. The only way to lower the deficit is to target the remaining $2 trillion, which includes discretionary spending and nonuniversal entitlement programs such as Medicaid, food stamps, and housing.

Republicans will also need to devolve education, agriculture, transportation, and energy spending to the states. They must eliminate housing subsidies and mortgage giants like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. In other words, they must convince the American people that the choice is between dependency programs or permanent stagflation and unaffordability. Cute messaging about egregious wasteful spending, which offends no corporate or individual constituency, will not solve our current crisis. Honesty remains the only viable path forward.

Republicans should craft their reconciliation bill to fully repeal the Green New Deal and all climate regulations, reset discretionary spending to pre-COVID-19 levels, and enact welfare reform stronger than the 1996 measure. Some commentators falsely claim Social Security and Medicare are the only paths to reducing deficits, neglecting the many “other mandatory spending” programs that are not universal. Coupled with substantial health care reforms to lower consumer costs, this approach offers the only realistic way to address inflation.

Congress cannot focus solely on tax cuts this time. Yes, lawmakers should extend the 2017 tax cuts and add targeted cuts to spur small-business growth, but unlike in 2017, the primary emphasis should be on curbing government spending. A frank discussion about the true nature of these expenditures is essential to meet the mandate of lowering inflation at long last.

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WATCH LIVE: DOGE subcommittee wages war on government waste in first hearing



The House subcommittee of Delivering on Government Efficiency held its first hearing Wednesday in the dawn of President Donald Trump's second term.

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who chairs the subcommittee, opened the hearing by outlining the DOGE's mission to address government waste.

'We as Republicans and Democrats can still hold tightly to our beliefs, but we are going to have to let go of funding them in order to save our sinking ship.'

"The American people are watching," Greene said. "The legislative branch can't sit on the sidelines."

"In this subcommittee, we will fight the war on waste shoulder to shoulder with President Trump, Elon Musk, and the DOGE team," Greene continued. "This week, we turn our attention to improper payments by the federal government, including Medicaid and Medicare. I'm looking forward to what we find out and how to solve this crisis."

Modeled after Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, Greene emphasized the subcommittee's focus on the staggering national debt, aiming to implement cuts to reduce federal waste and bloated bureaucracies.

For the first time in American history, our national debt surpassed $35 trillion dollars in June, and it has been steadily increasing ever since. This amounts to over $100,000 of debt for every American.

"This is not a Democrat problem. This is not a Republican problem," Greene said. "This is an American problem. To make it clear for everyone, not only are we $36 trillion dollars in debt, but the compounding interest on our debt is also growing out of control."

"We were each elected to serve and represent the American people and how their hard-earned tax dollars are spent," Greene added. "We as Republicans and Democrats can still hold tightly to our beliefs, but we are going to have to let go of funding them in order to save our sinking ship."

Watch the hearing live:

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The ‘conservative’ 5th Circuit just shielded Biden’s radical gender agenda



How does Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination, justify forcing doctors to violate the Hippocratic Oath and perform castrations to accommodate transgender ideology? No rational legal mind could reach that conclusion.

Yet the judiciary has become so politically compromised that even the supposedly conservative Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an interpretation of the law that forces doctors to perform these procedures — or risk losing Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements.

If doctors must wait until they are punished to challenge a rule, why don’t Trump’s directives get the same deference? What happened to legal consistency?

As part of the Biden administration’s relentless effort to impose transgender ideology nationwide, the president issued an order last year interpreting Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act as a mandate for doctors to perform irreversible castrations. Originally designed to prohibit sex-based discrimination under the 1972 law, Section 1557 has now been twisted into the prior administration’s legal justification for these procedures.

Yes, the deeply flawed Bostock v. Clayton County decision — thanks to Justice Neil Gorsuch — expanded the 1972 law to include protections for transgender individuals. But on what basis does an anti-discrimination law create a right to force doctors to perform procedures they believe cause harm?

Bostock involved an employee fired for cross-dressing at work. Biden’s order, by contrast, does not merely prohibit discrimination — it compels employers to provide not just dresses but irreversible medical procedures.

Questions of standing — and bad precedent

For any Republican-appointed judge, this should have been an easy decision. In 2022, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee in the Northern District of Texas, ruled in favor of the physician plaintiffs. He issued a declaratory judgment stating that the administration had completely misinterpreted the Affordable Care Act’s anti-discrimination provision. He also affirmed that physicians had clear standing to sue over the order.

In December, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit, including two Republican appointees, ruled that doctors lacked standing to sue the Biden administration.

“The plaintiffs do not consider their actions to be gender-identity discrimination, nor do they provide evidence that HHS would view them as such,” the court stated.

“Plaintiffs have failed to show they are actually violating the Notification, much less facing a credible threat of enforcement," Judges Edith Jones, Catharina Haynes, and Dana Douglas wrote in their per curiam opinion.

Last week, despite a 12-5 Republican-appointed majority, all but one judge — James Ho — refused to hear the case en banc, allowing this precedent to stand.

This case highlights how judges selectively apply standing based on political considerations. The left rarely struggles with standing. During Trump’s presidency, his executive orders faced immediate legal challenges, and liberal judges routinely granted standing.

For instance, blue states successfully sued over Trump’s order on anchor-baby citizenship, yet red states were repeatedly denied standing to challenge Biden’s immigration law violations.

The inconsistency is blatant. Doctors facing potential loss of Medicaid reimbursements supposedly do not have a “justiciable case,” but Trump’s executive orders were routinely enjoined before they even took effect.

The idea that doctors cannot sue over a regulation that threatens their Medicaid reimbursements until after they suffer consequences defies legal precedent.

A terrible double standard

Meanwhile, Trump’s executive orders have been blocked before even appearing in the federal register. How can courts enjoin a presidential directive before it becomes an official regulation?

If doctors must wait until they are punished to challenge a rule, why don’t Trump’s directives get the same deference? What happened to legal consistency?

The idea that doctors who have not yet faced punishment but could lose Medicaid reimbursements for refusing to perform castrations lack a ripe, justiciable claim is absurd given what happens in the courts daily.

I’m all for a minimalist judicial approach, but why does that never apply to those suing Republican presidents? Indeed, the courts have become a one-way ratchet for the left.

In a spirited dissent from his 16 colleagues — something he has grown accustomed to — Judge Ho argued that refusing to provide sex hormone therapy is not the same as categorical discrimination. A doctor who declines to prescribe hormones for gender dysphoria is not refusing to treat a transgender patient for a broken bone.

The Supreme Court already ruled in Geduldig v. Aiello (1974) that denying coverage for pregnancy does not constitute sex-based discrimination. “While it is true that only women can become pregnant, it does not follow that every legislative classification concerning pregnancy is a sex-based classification,” the justices ruled.

On the question of standing, Judge Ho criticized the majority for basing its argument on the notion that a podiatrist wouldn’t offer “transition” services anyway, so not every doctor should have standing to sue. He called this absurd, pointing out that Dr. Susan Neese, the plaintiff in this case, practices general internal medicine.

“She is fully capable of providing such services to minors,” Ho wrote. “She just thinks it’s wrong to do so.”

“If there’s a plausible basis for theorizing that it’s somehow outside of Dr. Neese’s specialty to simply make a referral of a minor patient to another doctor who specializes in the field, the United States has not offered one,” he concluded.

Trump is likely to overturn this policy anyway, but as Ho warned, the Fifth Circuit’s decision allows a bad precedent to remain in place for future cases.

“By denying rehearing en banc, our court today leaves on the books a published, precedential ruling that overturns the district court’s dutiful efforts and validates administrative overreach in an area of profound sensitivity,” he wrote in a footnote.

One can only speculate, but given the left-wing political attacks on the Fifth Circuit, some worry that the judges are softening their stance to avoid appearing too conservative. Whether that’s better or worse than siding with the ideological left outright is debatable. Either way, Trump should make a point of appointing more judges like James Ho in his second term — jurists who not only hold sound legal principles but also have the courage to rule accordingly.

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