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Source; A friend who wants to remain anonymous

Originally, Medicaid was designed to serve low-income children, older people, and people with disabilities who couldn’t work. Today, it has expanded so far beyond those groups that in many states, it functions like a single-payer healthcare system in all but name. Enrolled in Medicaid are millions of able-bodied, working-age adults, many of whom could obtain private insurance if they chose to. In some cases, states have opened the doors to illegal immigrants as well.

As expected, AGAIN left-wing/democrats are howling that this is an attack on the most vulnerable Americans with stories intended to tug at the public’s heartstrings. They are meant to paint Republicans as cartoon villains who wake up every morning dreaming of ways to harm children and people with disabilities. But the reality is just the opposite. The people neo-libs lie about, saying they are protecting them, are precisely the ones who suffer when the program is stretched, as left-wing/dems demand, to cover millions of people it was never designed to serve.

Right now, Medicaid has been diluted so thoroughly that people with disabilities are forced to compete for care with healthy, able-bodied adults. Resources are finite because when states spend billions covering people who can work or who entered the country illegally, there are fewer caregivers and dollars left for those who truly cannot survive without help. It’s not compassion to pretend the program is sustainable in its current structure. It’s cowardice.

But this lying from left-wing/democrats isn’t new. For decades, libs/dems have used the same tactic whenever Republicans propose even modest reforms. They declare that any attempt to rein in a bloated and fraud ridden entitlement program will literally kill people. If you believe their rhetoric, Republicans have supposedly been killing Americans by the millions every year, whether by ending net neutrality, confirming a Supreme Court justice, passing tax cuts, or letting states set their own abortion laws. The hysteria, propaganda and lies by neo-libs/dems has become so predictable that it has lost the power it once held.

Consider the failed effort to repeal and replace BObamacare. In 2017, after nearly a decade of promising to dismantle the deceptively named affordable care act, Republicans finally had the votes in the House to pass a repeal bill. But multiple efforts in the Senate collapsed under the weight of coordinated left-wing/democratic lies and a relentless left-wing media campaign declaring that millions would die if the ACA were undone. Ultimately, only the individual mandate penalty was repealed, while the core of the law remained intact. Republicans learned the hard way that if you don’t control the narrative, you will lose, even if your policy is right on the merits. They weren’t making that mistake again. This time, Republicans defended their proposals and to call out the lies in real time. During a press conference Trump was asked whether 11.8 million Americans would lose their healthcare under the new plan. He didn’t dodge, saying: “It’s going to be a smaller number than that, and that number will be waste, fraud, and abuse." He reminded the press that libs/dems have created a system so inefficient and overextended that it’s already failing the people it was meant to help. Trump stated: “We are going to save it, democrats are going to destroy Medicaid and Medicare, and they have to, because their numbers don’t work. They have made it so bad already.” J.D. Vance was equally blunt, responding to left-wing social media: “They want to bankrupt Medicaid by importing millions of illegal immigrants and giving them healthcare that ought by right go to his fellow citizens. Now they pretend to care about them. The dishonesty is off the charts.”

But perhaps the most powerful argument isn’t from politicians but the people themselves. We have been subjected to so many apocalyptic warnings over the years that we no longer flinch when the next one arrives. The boy who cried wolf has cried himself hoarse. The public is starting to understand that real compassion isn’t measured by how many people you can cram into a failing program. It’s measured by whether the people who truly need help are actually able to get it. If Republicans want to finish this argument once and for all, they shouldn’t stop with trimming the Medicaid rolls. They should also address the aspects of the program that deter good doctors. Currently, Medicaid reimburses providers at rates often 50% of what private insurers pay. Most reputable physicians can’t afford to keep their doors open at those rates, so they limit Medicaid patients to a handful of charity slots or opt out entirely. That’s why so many patients end up in practices that prey on desperation and profit from volume billing. Republicans have a chance to deliver a 1-2 punch: clean out the waste and fraud, and then raise reimbursement rates enough to attract quality doctors back into the system. If they do both, they won’t just be known for cutting Medicaid; they’ll be remembered for saving it.

That isn’t cruelty. It’s sanity. And if we’re ever going to build a safety net that actually works, this is the long-overdue 1st step. Republicans can seize the moment to become the party that rescued Medicaid from collapse and returned it to its original purpose: caring for the truly vulnerable with dignity and respect.


Supplemental Info:

https://reason.com/2025/06/29/social-security-and-medicare-are-racing-toward-drastic-cuts-yet-lawmakers-refuse-to-act/

https://spectator.org/doge-is-missing-2-trillion-in-healthcare-waste/

https://www.heritage.org/medicaid/commentary/medicaid-deserves-be-cherished-and-loved-and-reformed

https://reason.com/2025/07/03/the-4-trillion-big-beautiful-bill-breaks-the-bank-and-violates-congress-own-budget-rules/

Mapped: The Income a Family Needs to Be Middle Class, by State 

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