MAGA Congressman Ben Cline tries to explain away vote to slash Medicare, Medicaid

Ben Cline, our Sixth District MAGA congressman, voted last week to slash $1.2 trillion from what our country spends on Medicare and Medicaid, which will cause in the area of 10 million people to lose access to health insurance.

Cline either doesn’t understand the consequences of his vote, or he thinks you’re as dumb as he is.

“These reforms protect the program for those it was intended to serve: expectant mothers, children, seniors, and individuals with disabilities. This bill focuses on cracking down on waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid and discouraging states from expanding costly Obamacare programs. Claims that it takes away healthcare are simply not accurate — these changes apply only to those who aren’t eligible under federal law,” Cline said in a statement to The News Virginian on the so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” that passed the House last week.

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ICYMI

• ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ passes House: Trillions in cuts for Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps
• House energy coalition decries Republicans’ ‘Big Ugly Tax Scam’ as reckless
• Hold your horses: Budget bill likely to get bogged down in Senate

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So, Cline thinks there’s $1.2 trillion in “waste, fraud and abuse,” and that “discouraging states from expanding costly Obamacare programs” will somehow give more people access to healthcare?

Expanding those “costly Obamacare programs” is precisely what got 24 million people on the health-insurance rolls between 2014 and 2024.

Which is to say, progress has been made.

But there’s still work to do – there are still 20 million people without health insurance, and guess what? They still get sick, and when they get sick, and they can’t afford to go to the doctor, they go to the emergency room instead.

And guess who pays for that?

There’s a reason the U.S. pays more for healthcare than any other nation on the face of the earth, with outcomes comparable to Third World countries.

Cline makes it out to be that the way to strengthen our healthcare system is “by requiring work from able-bodied adults, removing illegal immigrants, and cracking down on ineligible recipients.”

Reality check: 70 percent of the adults on Medicaid have jobs, but too many employers, like, say, Walmart, Target, your local chain grocery store, don’t give their employees enough hours to qualify for employer-provided benefits, which is a feature, not a bug, of late-stage capitalism – big business saves money by letting the government cover its benefits for its employees.

More from the reality check department: 37 percent of the Medicaid rolls are children.

Guess they’re going to need to get jobs now, too.

Just say what you really mean here, Ben: the millionaires and billionaires who fund your campaigns want bigger tax breaks, and we can’t afford to give them more money for luxury boats and private jets without taking money from people who work at Walmart and Target for pennies on the dollar of what they’re worth.

It’s not like you’d be admitting something that we all already know isn’t true.