Musk and Trump's battle re-erupts over the Big Beautiful Bill
'If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day,' Musk said Monday evening on X. 'Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE.'
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Rick Scott Demands More Cuts to Medicaid, Which His Company Allegedly Scammed
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who's famous for his former hospital company's record-setting Medicare fraud settlements, is currently leading an effort to make Donald Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' even more painful for America's poor. The legislation already cuts $930 billion from Medicaid, the nation's government health insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans, and would eliminate coverage for millions. Scott's amendment, expected to get a vote Monday, would take away another $313 billion in state Medicaid funds and force hundreds of thousands of additional people, at least, off the program. Scott has framed his proposed Medicaid cuts as necessary to preserve the program 'for those who truly need it' — and not 'able-bodied' adults. 'If you don't want to work, you're the one who decided you don't want health care,' he recently said on Fox News. He's suggested Democrats are using tax dollars to 'give illegal aliens Medicaid benefits,' even though undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid, claiming that blue states want to 'exploit this safety net.' Ironically enough, some of the claims against Scott's old hospital company revolved around exploiting Medicaid, and billing for services that patients didn't need. Scott's office did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone's request for comment Monday. The senator resigned as CEO of the hospital chain known as HCA Healthcare in 1997 amid an ongoing federal probe and a series of whistleblower complaints. He has long faced attacks from Democrats over the $1.7 billion that HCA paid to resolve fraud allegations in the early 2000s. Some of the allegations involved Medicaid. In late 2000, as part of the 'largest government fraud settlement ever' with the Justice Department, HCA pleaded guilty to criminal conduct and agreed to pay over $840 million in fines, penalties, and damages to resolve claims of unlawful billing practices. Among the claims HCA settled over: The company was accused of billing 'Medicare, Medicaid, the Defense Department's TRICARE health care program, and the Federal Employees' Health Benefits Program, for lab tests that were not medically necessary' and 'not ordered by physicians.' HCA was accused of 'upcoding,' or pretending patients were sicker than they were in order to increase reimbursements to its hospitals. 'The guilty plea includes one count relating to this upcoding practice,' the Justice Department wrote in a press release. The company was also accused of billing Medicaid 'for home health visits for patients who did not qualify to receive them or were not performed,' the department said. The civil and administrative settlement agreement between HCA and the U.S. Justice Department said the company, from 1995 to 1998, submitted claims to Medicaid, Medicare, and TRICARE, '(a) for visits to patients who did not qualify for home health services because (i) the patients were not homebound, (ii) there was no medical need for such services, or (iii) there was no medical need for skilled services; (b) for visits that were not provided; (c) for visits to deliver services that were in fact or should have been provided by an assisted living facility.' HCA and the Justice Department entered into an additional settlement agreement in 2003, in which the company agreed to pay another $631 million to resolve false claims it submitted to federal health programs. In a civil settlement agreement, the Justice Department wrote that health regulators 'contend that they have certain administrative claims against HCA under the provisions for permissive exclusion from the Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health care programs.' Under both agreements, the Justice Department announced that HCA would pay millions of dollars to state Medicaid agencies: $13.6 million in 2000, and then $17.5 million in 2003. The department said the latter figure represented 'direct state losses.' A few decades later, Scott is now trying to extract a huge amount of money from state Medicaid funds to help finance Trump's latest round of tax cuts for the rich. Some things never really change. More from Rolling Stone Senate Republicans Pass Trump's Bill to Strip Health Care From Millions J.D. Vance Dismisses Kicking Millions Off Medicaid: 'Minutiae' Trump Teases Deporting Elon: 'We'll Have to Take a Look' Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
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White House Pushes B.S. About ‘Big Beautiful Bill' as Popularity Craters
President Donald Trump has insisted that Republicans get his so-called 'Big Beautiful Bill' to his desk by the Fourth of July. With only days left before the self-imposed deadline, the White House is now scrambling to do damage control around the deeply unpopular legislation produced by Congress. A series of recent polls shows that the bill — which will force millions off of Medicaid, restrict access to food assistance programs, and cost the poorest Americans billions over the next 10 — is underwater with the public. A Washington Post survey recently produced a net favorability rating of -19. Fox News clocked in at -21, a Quinnipiac poll produced a -26 rating, and KFF — formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation — found net favorability to be at -29 points. In the face of this widespread public disapproval and the GOP's inter-party squabbling over the bill, the White House is pushing 'fact checks' insisting that the legislation would not hurt low-income families or the economy at large, and that it is not just a dressed-up tax break for billionaires at the expense of everyone and everything else. In a 'fact check' sheet issued Sunday night by the White House Communication Office, the administration claimed that the legislation would 'put more than $10,000 a year back in the pockets of typical hardworking families,' that the 'OBBB protects and strengthens Medicaid for those who rely on it,' and that the suggestion that people will 'literally die' if denied access to health care is 'one of the most egregious deranged attacks from the Left peddling fear over the facts.' The document repeatedly emphasized that American households would be taking home an extra $10,000 in income a year. Huge, right? Unfortunately — but not unexpectedly — the figure is a gross misrepresentation. The figure, which was circulated in several communications released by the White House and touted by Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt during a briefing earlier this month, is the high end of a projection produced by the Council of Economic Advisers – an internal White House agency. According to a Politifact review, the Council's range of a $7,600-$10,900 increase in annual take-home pay for a family of four was based on uniquely optimistic projections about how much total economic stimulus the 'Big Beautiful Bill' would produce. Where other independent agencies have predicted a maximum GDP increase of around 0.5-2 percent over the next 10 years, the counsel assumed an almost five percent increase over five years and a weighted 2.9-3.5 percent increase over 10 years. The $10,000 figure isn't a tangible change in income based on rewrites to the tax code, but rather a fantastical number carved out of an imaginary GDP boom. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Trump's enshrinement of his 2017 tax cuts, along with the exclusionary reforms being made to programs like Medicaid and SNAP, will cost the lowest-earning tenth of American households about $1,600 a year. 'Federal and state in-kind benefits would decrease household resources by $1.0 trillion,' the CBO wrote. 'Primarily because federal spending on benefits provided through Medicaid and SNAP would be lower. Changes to program benefits that states made in response to changes in federal policy would also reduce household resources.' Meanwhile, the richest Americans would see 'resources would increase, on average, over the projection period by about $12,000,' or even more given to the favorable pro-corporate policies packed into the bill. During Monday's press briefing, Leavitt insisted that 'this bill strengthens Medicaid,' and that rural hospitals were exaggerating the potential fallout of spending cuts to the program. According to the CBO, 11 million Americans could be squeezed out of their health care coverage over changes to Medicaid, bureaucratic red tape, more stringent work requirements, and changes to public insurance marketplaces. According to KFF, 'an estimated 1.5 million fewer people could be covered by Medicaid in rural areas under the reconciliation bill in 2034,' and the resulting drop in Medicaid enrollment could force rural hospitals and clinics — often the only nodes connecting rural Americans to the health care system — to close down. The bill 'protects' Medicaid only in the sense that the program will continue to exist, but it in no way protects the Americans who rely on it for their health. Millions of them will be forced to find care elsewhere if Republicans pass the 'Big Beautiful Bill.' More from Rolling Stone Senate Republicans Pass Trump's Bill to Strip Health Care From Millions J.D. Vance Dismisses Kicking Millions Off Medicaid: 'Minutiae' Trump Teases Deporting Elon: 'We'll Have to Take a Look' Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
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14 minutes ago
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J.D. Vance Dismisses Kicking Millions Off Medicaid: ‘Minutiae'
President Donald Trump and the GOP's so-called 'Big Beautiful Bill' is far from beautiful and deeply unpopular with the public. Battling concerns from voters about increased barriers to accessing programs like Medicaid and food assistance; massive transfers of wealth from less fortunate Americans to corporations and the rich; and the mass deregulation of industries like crypto and AI, Vice President J.D. Vance is attempting a new tactic to persuade the hesitant: ignore all of that and focus on how much money the bill is giving to ICE. 'The thing that will bankrupt this country more than any other policy is flooding the country with illegal immigration and then giving those migrants generous benefits. The [One Big Beautiful Bill] fixes this problem. And therefore it must pass,' Vance wrote Tuesday on X. 'Everything else — the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy — is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions,' he added. The millions of people who are expected to lose access to their health insurance as a result of the legislation would likely beg to differ. The version of the legislation passed by the House would give Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over $100 billion for the construction of new immigration detention centers, increasing arrest and deportation efforts, militarization of the border and the hiring of new agents. Such a massive windfall for immigration enforcement comes as ICE has blown through its annual budget months before the end of the fiscal year. In May, during a hearing of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) laid into the reckless spending of the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Kristi Noem. 'You are spending like you don't have a budget. You are on the verge of running out of money for the fiscal year […] You are ignoring the immigration laws of this nation, implementing a brand-new immigration system that you have invented that has little relation to the statutes that you are required — that you are commanded — to follow as spelled out in your oath of office,' Murphy said. 'Your agency acts as if laws don't matter, as if the election gave you some mandate to violate the Constitution and the laws passed by this Congress. It did not give you that mandate.' Through the reconciliation bill and presidential policy, Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration are looking to give DHS and ICE that mandate. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has demanded that ICE detain at least 3,000 migrants a day. As the reconciliation bill continues to move through the Senate, Trump and Noem traveled to Florida on Tuesday to tour the so-called 'Alligator Alcatraz,' a migrant detention center built in the hostile backwaters of the Florida Everglades. 'We're going to teach them how to run away from an alligator,' Trump said ahead of his visit to the center. 'Don't run in a straight line,' Trump said, waving his hand in a zig-zag to demonstrate how a detainee might potentially need to move to escape a half-ton reptile. This kind of callous cruelty is what the administration is focused on, whether it be its treatment of migrants, or dismissing kicking millions off of their health care as insignificant 'minutiae.' More from Rolling Stone White House Pushes B.S. About 'Big Beautiful Bill' as Popularity Craters Dem Senator Whines Amid GOP Push to Gut Medicaid: 'I Just Want to Go Home' Rick Scott Demands More Cuts to Medicaid, Which His Company Allegedly Scammed Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
