Millions more Americans signed up for taxpayer-funded health care coverage like Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace during the Biden administration, a shift lauded by Democrats as a success.
But Republicans, who are looking to slash federal spending and offer lucrative tax cuts to corporations and wealthier Americans, now see a big target ripe for trimming. The $880 billion Medicaid program is financed mostly by federal taxpayers, who pick up as much as 80% of the tab in some states. And states, too, have said they’re having trouble financing years of growth and sicker patients who enrolled in Medicaid.
To whittle down the budget, the GOP-controlled Congress is eyeing work requirements for Medicaid. It’s also considering paying a shrunken, fixed rate to states. All told, over the next decade, Republican lawmakers could try to siphon billions of dollars from the nearly-free health care coverage offered to the poorest Americans.
So let’s get this right.
They currently have care, including preventative care. If we remove them from Medicaid, they will no longer be able to afford care, even preventative care.
The only doctor’s office that can’t turn them down based on their ability to pay is the emergency room, the most expensive form of healthcare in America.
So instead of preventing large medical bills and keeping emergency rooms manageable, we’re going to instead shift the burden onto hospitals, fill emergency rooms, who as usual, shift this burden onto the paying customers (also us, btw), at the most expensive rate possible.
Yep, sounds like a republican plan to me.
$20 says they’re going to try to make it so hospitals can refuse care.
The bankruptcy courts are clearly the best administrative body to administer our system of socialized medicine because they make participants suffer the most.
I don’t even know if we have to bankrupt them anymore. I think a Biden executive order just stopped or severely limited credit reporting on medical debt, and I don’t think trump or musk has fucked that one back up.
But what they did do is fuck up the CFPB, so these debt collectors are going to get away with more fraud fueled bullshit. But I wonder if you can simply report any medical debt that does show up to be inaccurate based on the Biden EO.
There still are laws in place, the dumb dickheads just fired some of the enforcers. Now, debt collectors are going to have to try to garner your wages, and if you’re smart enough, you’ll go into court with evidence that you have been following the process of law, and they haven’t since the enforcers are gone, and it’ll just further roadblock the debt collecting scumbags.
That is of course, in a just world. In the real world, very few will know about their rights and recourse, and all it takes is one shitty judge with prejudice to ruin lives, as usual.
Each state has a deceptive trade practices act that regulates debt collection practice. The neat thing about them is that each violation carries a substantial fine payable to the victim. Texas is $11k per violation (or at least that was the amount when I last looked into it). Usually you can get an attorney to take these cases if there are decent records. Again, you are right that the most vulnerable will suffer the most.