Free Republic

The left is on the warpath over the GOP’s ‘heartless’ welfare reform.Read it and weep: The US national debt now sits at an almost unfathomable $37 trillion. If you run the numbers, it is easy to understand how impossible – or at best improbable – it will be to extricate ourselves from the colossal hole the central state has dug over decades. No less than 75% of the massive federal budget is devoted to so-called mandatory spending on entitlement programs, such as Medicaid and interest payments, while another 13% is dedicated to national defense and is virtually mandatory. This means...

Elon Musk and House Republicans both promised to tackle federal spending. It turns out only one of them was serious, and it wasn’t Musk. Musk, who broke with President Trump this week after labeling Republicans’ reconciliation bill a “disgusting abomination,” might claim some authority. As leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, he was the public face of Trump’s assault on government. Remember him feeding the U.S. Agency for International Development into the wood chipper? Encouraging civil servants to quit or be fired? The chain saw? Musk loves the theatrical: He helped scuttle an omnibus spending bill last year mainly...

Here’s a brilliant idea from our friend, John Goodman, who writes to us: “If you do this the right way, it will (1) save a ton of money, (2) make it easier for enrollees to get health care.”It would also save people on Medicaid from losing a whole day of working instead of waiting in an emergency room for routine care, and provide higher quality care at the same time.Goodman explains:Private companies managing Medicaid (or the state itself) should be able to make deposits to Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) that would cover, say, all primary care. Enrollees would be restricted...

New Mexico’s program is just the tip of the iceberg.While experts have long dismissed large-scale Medicaid fraud as improbable, evidence from New Mexico tells a different story. This discovery presents an unprecedented opportunity to offset part of the $880 billion budget deficit without cutting healthcare services for enrollees.As the most powerful stakeholders, insurers frame fraud as an issue with hospitals, physicians, and enrollees while quietly escaping scrutiny themselves. A 2020 Health and Human Services report claimed that fraud in Medicaid fee-for-service stood at 12.3%, compared to just 0.3% in Medicaid managed care, reinforcing the industry’s message that managed care is...

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) made multiple false statements on President Donald Trump’s economy and the Republicans’ proposed changes to Medicaid and Obamacare spending, prompting a fact-check from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). Speaking on the Mornings with Zerlina radio show last Thursday, Jeffries repeated the already-debunked lie that “about 13.7 million people will be flown off their health care” due to the reconciliation bill the House passed last month, which is now under the consideration of the Senate. Jeffries claimed: Well, it’s a reckless extreme budget that Republicans are trying to jam down the throats of the...

“Let’s keep this our little secret,” child predators sometimes tell their victims. This apparently was the attitude, too, of a Nevada official who was hiding youth “trans” castration surgeries from parents. This man was also using a loophole to get Medicaid (our tax dollars) to pay for the sexual-distortion treatments (SDTs).This time, however, the dark secret has been brought to light, by an undercover operation by O’Keefe Media Group (OMG). As that organization reported Friday (note: the official, being woke, uses the wrong pronouns to identify a cited youth):Deshaun Eli Mack, a Family Services Specialist with the Nevada DHHS [Department...

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Republicans’ so-called “big, beautiful” spending bill does not include Medicaid cuts. Johnson said, “No. You can underscore what I am about to tell you: there are no Medicaid cuts in the big, beautiful bill. We are not cutting Medicaid. What we are doing is reducing the program wrought with fraud, waste and abuse to make sure that that program is essential to so many people and ensure that it is available for the most vulnerable. It’s intended for young, single pregnant women, the disabled and elderly. ”

The state is taking action against Leo Human Services following a KARE 11 investigation uncovering alleged forgeries and false billing claims.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Republican Sen. Joni Ernst was met with shouts and groans when she said “we all are going to die” as she addressed potential changes to Medicaid eligibility at a town hall in north-central Iowa on Friday.

In recent years, Americans have learned a hard truth: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” During COVID-19, we were told to trust the experts, obey mandates, and silence our dissent. Over time, the truth emerged—much of what we were sold was false, and the price we paid in lives, education, and finances from their false narrative scam was extreme.Now, many of those same voices are repeating another falsehood: that cutting Medicaid will cause Americans to die.Recently, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and 19 House conservatives called for “structural reforms” to Medicaid in a letter supporting...

Democrats are busy fearmongering and predicting widespread tragedy that would emanate from the “Big Beautiful Bill” if it passes, but they should maybe think about taking a deep breath and listening to what Dr. Mehmet Oz has to say. They claim that the evil GOP wants to take away healthcare for the elderly and the disadvantaged with the measure, but Republicans counter that what they are really trying to do is get rid of the eye-opening waste and fraud that programs like Medicaid and Medicare are victims of. And there’s a whole lot of grift going on, according to Oz,...

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that there were “more than 1.4 million illegal aliens on Medicaid.” Johnson said, “We are not cutting Medicaid in this package. There‘s a lot of misinformation out there about this.” He continued, “The numbers of Americans who are affected are those that are entwined in our work to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse. And what do I mean by that? You got more than 1.4 million illegal aliens on Medicaid. Medicaid is not intended for non-U.S. citizens. It‘s intended for the most vulnerable populations of Americans, which...

Twenty people, a mental health business and a church were charged in an indictment that alleged Arizona’s Medicaid program was defrauded $60 million in a scheme involving billing for mental health treatment and addiction rehabilitation, the latest indictment in a series of crackdowns in the state focusing on sober living homes. The indictment announced Tuesday alleged Happy House Behavioral Health LLC was paid the money for services that were either never provided or only partially completed and that there was billing for clients who were deceased and incarcerated. Authorities say sober living homes referred clients to the behavioral health business,...

The One, Big, Beautiful Bill is a generational chance to protect Medicaid for Americans by removing at least 1.4 million illegal immigrants from the program.Read more in Breitbart:“House Republicans are moving to block an estimated 1.4 million illegal aliens from receiving American taxpayer-funded Medicaid as Democrats struggle to message their support for the unpopular position.The House Energy and Commerce Committee completed its markup of its portion of the budget reconciliation bill Wednesday morning after an all-night session which included a provision blocking anyone unable to verify citizenship, nationality, or satisfactory immigration status from coverage.The committee projects 1.4 million illegal aliens...

SummaryTrump meets with divided House Republicans Tax provisions, Medicaid cuts lead disputes Bill would extend tax cuts from Trump's first term WASHINGTON, May 20 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Tuesday pressed his fellow Republicans in the U.S. Congress to unite behind a sweeping tax-cut bill, but apparently failed to convince a handful of holdouts who could still block a package that encompasses much of his domestic agenda.In a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill, Trump bluntly warned Republicans in the House of Representatives not to press for further changes to the sprawling bill, which would cut taxes and tighten eligibility...

WASHINGTON—About 1.4 million illegal immigrants are enrolled in Medicaid, something House Republicans hope to change. To the White House, this is a clear instance of lawmakers eliminating fraud and saving taxpayers’ money. But to Democrats, it’s the worst of all possible things: Republican attempts to cut Medicaid.

California uses a loophole to inflate provider payments, draw down more federal funds, then diverts the money –- including $4 billion to pay for illegal aliens on Medicaid.

WASHINGTON — A key House Republican holdout on President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” to provide tax cuts, border security, defense spending and green energy clawbacks is still calling for deeper spending cuts to chip away at the national debt — as the legislation heads for a critical vote Sunday. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), one of several GOPers who tanked the bill in the House Budget Committee on Friday, says he and other fiscal hawks are still hoping for hundreds of billions dollars more in savings to help reduce the nation’s $36 trillion debt. The Texas Republican huddled with White House...

As Republicans on Capitol Hill continue to work on a reconciliation bill and delivering on the extension of the 2019 Trump tax cuts (and preventing a massive tax hike), Democrats are fear mongering about so-called "cuts" to Medicaid. In typical fashion, they're getting some help from their friends in the media to push the narrative. "The Medicaid portions of the GOP megabill would lead to 10.3 million people losing coverage under the health safety net program and 7.6 million people going uninsured, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office," POLITICO reports. "Republicans released the partial estimates Tuesday less...

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) said Wednesday on CNN’s “Inside Politics” that he will not support the House spending bill because it has “real Medicaid benefit cuts.” Hawley said, “It ought to be just a basic foundational principle, it is wrong to cut health care for the working poor, and that’s what we’re talking about here with Medicaid. My state is a Medicaid expansion state, over 20% of Missourians, including hundreds of thousands of children, are on Medicaid.” He added, “I don’t like the idea of decreasing funding for rural hospitals. I’m worried that the House bill goes way too far...