Tag: health care
Bill Cassidy

'You Own This': Top GOP Senator Burned As Kennedy Wrecks Health Services

As the Trump administration’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., presses forward with a mass firing in a sweeping effort to downsize the agency tasked with safeguarding the nation’s well-being—including removing top leaders from key programs, including from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—a Republican Senator who cast the pivotal vote that enabled the controversial anti-vaccine activist to take the helm of the massive public health agency is facing scrutiny and backlash.

During Kennedy’s confirmation process U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana became an important voice and crucial vote in persuading his fellow Republicans to support what many saw as an extreme candidate. Cassidy, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, is a medical doctor who worked for decades in public hospitals, and is an active vaccine advocate.

Senator Cassidy “ultimately provided the one-vote margin needed to advance Kennedy’s nomination to the full Senate,” as the Los Angeles Times had reported.

Defending his vote to confirm Kennedy, Senator Cassidy said the scion of the American political family had made assurances to him that convinced him to support his nomination.

Cassidy “said he was swayed by Kennedy’s commitments to support the immunization schedules recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, maintain systems used to vet new vaccines and monitor their safety, preserve statements on the CDC website assuring the public that vaccines don’t cause autism, and meet with Cassidy ‘multiple times a month,’ among other things.”

“I will watch carefully for any effort to wrongfully sow public fear about vaccines,” Cassidy said.

STAT News reported that Senator Cassidy “said he would be Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s keeper.”

Over the weekend, Cassidy was sharply criticized—and blamed—when HHS forced out Dr. Peter Marks, the head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration division responsible for assuring the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, as CNN reported. Dr. Marks resigned but was “given the choice to resign or be fired.”

On Tuesday, The Hill reported that Kennedy “won’t acknowledge the scientific consensus that childhood vaccines do not cause autism.”

“That skepticism over seemingly settled science appeared to come to a head over the weekend when the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) top vaccine official was forced out and issued a fiery public letter blasting Kennedy.”

That official was Dr. Marks.

Cassidy appeared to express concern, but nothing more.

“I thank Dr. Marks for his dedicated service to the health of our country,” the Senator wrote. “His departure is a loss to the FDA. Commissioner Makary and Secretary Kennedy should replace him with someone of similar stature and credibility amongst the scientific community, who will lead without bias.”

Tuesday afternoon, CNN’s Manu Raju reported that he asked Cassidy about the firings of 10,000 HHS employees.

“I’m trying to understand it,” Cassidy said. “They say that they are consolidating duplicative agencies.”

Asked if he supports the firings, Cassidy replied: ‘Like I said I’m investigating.”

Back in January, Cassidy had asked RFK Jr. if he could “trust” him, as Politico reported.

Asked “if he thinks RFK Jr is backsliding on his commitments,” Raju reported, Cassidy said: “We’re in dialogue about that.”

Kennedy had told Cassidy that he was “not going to go into HHS and impose my preordained opinions on anybody at HHS. I’m going to empower the scientists to do their job.”

Many of those scientists were fired on Tuesday at 5 AM.

MSNBC analyst and Mother Jones Washington Bureau Chief David Corn blasted Cassidy, writing: “Sen. Bill Cassidy, you violated the Hippocratic oath when you supported RFK Jr.’s nomination and you own this—and all the horrific consequences to come.”

Corn added a screenshot of a post from a popular epidemiologist, Katelyn Jetelina, detailing a few of the consequences of Tuesday’s firings.

Cassidy also came under fire on Tuesday for telling CNBC, “Is there some way that we can cut Medicare—excuse me—reform Medicare—so that benefits stay the same, but that it’s less expensive, more efficient?”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

'This Will Kill People': House GOP Guts Medicaid For Billionaire Tax Cut

'This Will Kill People': House GOP Guts Medicaid For Billionaire Tax Cut

By a slim 217-213 margin, House Republicans narrowly passed a bill Tuesday night that makes deep cuts to safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps while simultaneously extending President Donald Trump's tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans. Wall Street Journal congressional reporter Olivia Beavers tweeted that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had a group of Republicans "shaking his hand, back slapping and congratulating him" after the vote was confirmed.

As Politico reported, the vote was initially slated to fail with multiple Republican holdouts expressing reservations about the scope of cuts in the bill. While the legislation makes $2 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts, Forbes reported that roughly $800 billion of those cuts came from federal support for state Medicaid programs, which provide health insurance for low-income families. But some Republicans, like Reps. Tim Burchett (R-TN), Warren Davidson (R-OH, Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Victoria Spartz (R-IN) wanted deeper cuts.

After Johnson and Trump both leaned on the four holdouts, three of them ended up flipping to support the bill, while Massie voted with the Democratic opposition. The Kentucky Republican explained that his primary hangup with the budget bill was that it added $20 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.

The bulk of that debt comes from extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for the next decade, which the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) said was "skewed to the rich, expensive and failed to deliver on its promises."

"As a share of after-tax income, tax cuts at the top — for both households in the top 1 percent and the top 5 percent — are more than triple the total value of the tax cuts received for people with incomes in the bottom 60 percent," the CBPP wrote.

Democrats were united in their opposition to the bill, and made sure to travel to the House of Representatives chamber to cast their vote after Johnson made it impossible for them to vote remotely or by proxy. Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-CO) tweeted that she traveled to Washington to vote on the bill despite giving birth to her son earlier that day.

"They want to rip away health care from 400,000 CO kids, take food off the plates of seniors & veterans, and make life more expensive for hardworking Coloradans – all so they can give tax breaks to corporations and billionaires like Elon Musk," she wrote.

Political scientist and New York Times contributor Miranda Yaver condemned the bill in a post to Bluesky, pointing out that Medicaid "covers 1 in 5 Americans overall, including 41% of births and 63% of nursing home care." She added that the bill cuts the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (also known as food stamps), which 41 million Americans depend on to afford groceries.

"This won’t just harm people. This will kill people," Yaver wrote. "They own this."

According to Bobby Kogan, who is the senior director of federal budget policy for the Center for American Progress, the bill would "cut SNAP down to just $1.60 per person per meal on [average] while cutting taxes for the top 0.1% by $278k." He pointed out that the bill still has a major obstacle in the Senate, where Republicans are more reticent to green-light the tax cut extension and cut Medicaid. Kogan also reminded his followers that Trump's attempted 2017 repeal of the Affordable Care Act was finally halted in the Senate during the "vote-o-rama" amendments process.

Democratic activist Joe Katz opined that "all purple district Republicans" will have immense difficulty "trying to convince people this wasn't TECHNICALLY a vote for cutting Medicaid and SNAP to pay for billionaire tax cuts." Journalist and editor Jonathan Cohn asserted that Tuesday night's vote proves that "there are no moderate Republicans in Congress."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Trump Pushes Plan To Gut Medicaid Despite Promise To Protect Program

Trump Pushes Plan To Gut Medicaid Despite Promise To Protect Program

President Donald Trump on Wednesday endorsed the House Republican budget plan, which would decimate Medicaid, the federal health insurance program that covers 72 million disabled and low-income Americans. What do Republicans get in return? Tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the rich.

In a rambling post on X, Trump wrote: "The House and Senate are doing a SPECTACULAR job of working together as one unified, and unbeatable, TEAM, however, unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important Legislation currently being discussed, the House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it! We need both Chambers to pass the House Budget to 'kickstart' the Reconciliation process, and move all of our priorities to the concept of, 'ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL.' It will, without question, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

The budget Trump endorsed would require cuts to Medicaid so extreme that it would surely force states—which administer the program—to either make up for the loss of federal subsidies or kick many recipients out of the program. Those cuts would then be used to help extend the tax cuts Republicans passed in 2017, which primarily benefitted the wealthy.

According to a July 2024 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank:

Households with incomes in the top 1 percent will receive an average tax cut of more than $60,000 in 2025, compared to an average tax cut of less than $500 for households in the bottom 60 percent, according to the Tax Policy Center (TPC). As a share of after-tax income, tax cuts at the top—for both households in the top 1 percent and the top 5 percent—are more than triple the total value of the tax cuts received for people with incomes in the bottom 60 percent.

Trump’s endorsement of the House GOP budget plan came just hours after he said in an interview with sycophantic Fox News host Sean Hannity that he wouldn't touch Medicaid.

“Medicare, Medicaid—none of that stuff is going to be touched," Trump said, an apparent lie if he wants the House Republican budget to pass.

"It's difficult to reconcile President Trump's vow to 'love and cherish' Medicaid with his endorsement of the House budget that would cut over $800 billion from the program. Cuts of that magnitude go well beyond eliminating fraud and abuse," Larry Levitt, executive vice president of health policy at KFF, said in a post on X.

Before Trump’s endorsement, the House budget appeared to be in trouble, with multiple GOP lawmakers in competitive House seats balking at the idea of stripping health care away from their constituents, Politico reported.

From Politico’s report:

The vulnerable incumbents wary of slashing Medicaid services include Reps. David Valadao of California, Don Bacon of Nebraska, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania. Others like Nicole Malliotakis of New York from redder districts have also raised concerns. They were generally blindsided by the deeper level of proposed cuts, a Republican said, as that possibility never came up in earlier discussions with GOP leaders.

With the narrow majority Republicans have in the House, they can afford to lose just one vote and have the budget pass.

Of course, Trump's endorsement of the proposed budget could breathe life into House GOP leadership's efforts since Republican lawmakers have so far refused to stand up to Trump out of fear.

Even if the bill does pass the House, it would then have to pass the Senate, where Republicans are also criticizing the House bill.

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri told HuffPost on Tuesday that he does not support the kind of massive Medicaid cuts that the House budget calls for.

“I would not do severe cuts to Medicaid,” Hawley said of the program, which voters in his deep red state voted in 2020 to expand to cover an additional 460,000 people in the state.

In sum, Republicans are in disarray. Who could’ve seen that coming?

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Poll: Americans Don't Trust Trump, Oz Or RFK Jr. To Protect Public Health

Poll: Americans Don't Trust Trump, Oz Or RFK Jr. To Protect Public Health

Donald Trump and his picks to lead American health care policy do not have the support of the public, according to a poll released Wednesday.

The Axios/Ipsos American Health Index poll shows that only 32 percent of Americans trust Trump on health issues. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, fares even worse with only 30 percent. And only 23 percent of Americans trust Mehmet Oz, Trump’s choice to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Trump’s picks to lead the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya, and the FDA, Marty Makary, fare even worse with support levels of 15 percent and 14 percent, respectively. But it’s likely that many Americans have no idea who those two people are, and that’s why they don’t trust them.

By contrast, Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, enjoys 45 percent trust. Trust is even higher for existing health agencies, with 66 percent of Americans trusting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and 62 percent backing the National Institutes of Health.

His years of attacking the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, certainly doesn’t help Trump’s trustworthiness on health care. Since he began his political career in 2015, Trump has pushed for repealing the program while offering nothing (to this day) to replace it. Trump backed legislation in 2017 that would have left millions of Americans without coverage and was thwarted by a unified Democratic Party and three breakaway Republican senators.

The history of his nominees on health issues also brings significant negatives to the table.

Kennedy has peddled debunked conspiracy theories on a host of medical issues, most notably his false assertion that childhood vaccination is connected to autism. Oz, a failed Senate candidate and former TV host, has been criticized for peddling dubious pills and supporting the privatization of Medicare.

Bhattacharya is an economist at Stanford University who proposed largely allowing COVID-19 to spread—despite the virus’ significant public health risk—while Makary, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, opposed mandatory vaccination, even though vaccination was ultimately key to restoring normalcy across the world.

Arguably, the biggest failure that Trump is associated with in his first presidential term was related to health care. On his watch, over 396,800 Americans died from COVID-19—following months of Trump repeatedly misinforming the public on the severity of the virus and denying states the resources they needed to fight infections.

This new poll from Axios/Ipsos shows that Trump’s narrow election win has not given him any kind of boost on the key issue of public health, and the low quality of his nominees isn’t helping.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Shop our Store

Headlines

Editor's Blog

Corona Virus

Trending

World