On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Arena,” House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) blamed Republicans for the Schumer shutdown. Jeffries said the Republicans are “asking Democrats to support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the health care of the American people.”
There is no spending bill being debated. This is a continuing resolution to fund the government. There are no poison pills attached. Of course, the Democrats would like to add a few poison pills.
There is no gutting of health care for the American people. That took place many years ago when Pelosi said we had to pass a bill (Obamacare) to find out what was in it. Since then, health care costs have skyrocketed while health care outcomes have gotten worse.
Host Boris Sanchez asked,
“[T]he counterargument from the administration, Leader Jeffries, is that it is Democrats who, by not voting for a CR almost identical to the one that they voted for just months ago, are holding these SNAP recipients and the beneficiaries of other government programs hostage. And I am curious about where you see all of this ending, because, eventually, that emergency funding will run out again. It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of $6 billion, not enough to cover the 9 billion that I understand is required for SNAP benefits in November. Eventually, there will be more agencies and programs that will run out of money. So what is the plan?”
Jeffries decided to go full on with lies and obfuscation. Either that or Jeffries really is ignorant as some on the right side of the aisle have intimated.
Jeffries answered, “Well, Donald Trump is the president. Republicans control the House and the Senate, and they’ve taken a my way or the highway approach from the very beginning of this year, unleashing their right-wing and extreme agenda and jamming it down the throats of the American people.”
Exactly what has been jammed down the throats of the American people? Any spending bill that was passed by Congress required bipartisan cooperation. What has happened is that programs that did not benefit Americans were cut back or ended completely. It was difficult for the Democrats to stand against these changes since DOGE was finding such obvious corruption present. This has dried up a source of funds for the Democratic Party.
Jeffries goes on to try to label the healthcare crisis that the Democrats are trying to “solve” as a Republican one.
“… as part of dealing with that situation, we have to, decisively, address the Republican healthcare crisis, particularly as it relates to the pending expiration of the Affordable Care Act tax credits.”
This is not a Republican healthcare crisis. Obamacare was passed without a single Republican vote in either the House or the Senate. The tax credits Jeffries is referring to are those that were passed in 2020 during COVID. Supposedly this was to make it easier for people who had been shut out of work to pay for healthcare coverage. The COVID emergency ended a long time ago.
The Democrats are desperate to hide the problem that is Obamacare. It cannot function as was described to the American public. What Jeffries is trying to do here is to shift the blame for the incredible increases in healthcare costs to the Republicans. This is all on the Democrats.
Jeffries goes on to try to conflate the closing of hospitals and community-based health centers with Medicaid cuts. Wrong! These places are closing because of the incredible regulatory burden Obamacare has placed on the healthcare system in this country. An increasing number of doctors are saying that it is not worth the effort they have to put in. This is particularly true in rural areas where the economies of scale are less applicable.
A new study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that nearly 5% of U.S. physicians left clinical practice in 2019, representing a 40% increase in just six years. Think about the timing of that. Although Obamacare was passed in 2010, full scale implementation of the program was delayed until after the elections in 2012.
Brian Joondeph, M. D. notes:
It confirms what every practicing doctor already knows: America’s physicians are burning out, checking out, and getting out, with female physicians and those in rural areas being the most likely to exit.
…
Medicine has become the only profession where the customer isn’t the patient, the boss isn’t the doctor, and the computer always wins.
The reasons for this mass departure aren’t mysterious; they’re baked into the system.
For many doctors, it’s death by a thousand clicks. The modern doctor’s day is no longer defined by caring for patients but about feeding the bureaucratic beast. Electronic health records were promoted as time-savers, but they quickly became time thieves.
For every hour of patient care, physicians spend nearly two hours on documentation and desk work. None of it enhances health care…
This is the elephant in the room that Jeffries and the Democrats do not want the public to see or talk about. Obamacare is a disaster. Wait times to see a doctor are now at 31 days in the large metropolitan areas.
This is why they are okay with kids going hungry. This is why they are okay with government employees going unpaid. This is why Schumer said that he will keep the government shut down until “planes are falling from the sky.”
Jeffries is just another paid shill to gaslight America.