Not telling it like it is

The press continues to obfuscate what's actually in the One Big Ugly Bill, especially when it comes to Medicaid work requirements.

Before getting to the news:

I proudly served as an Indivisible Illinois marshal during the No Kings Day march on Saturday where more than 75,000 people marched peacefully through the streets of downtown Chicago.

Over the course of nearly four hours, I engaged in just three preventive interventions. Before the march, a couple of skateboarders climbed to the top of a bus shelter near the rear of the rally site. A half dozen marshals, more concerned about potential damage and injury to the kids than police intervention, surrounded the entry point and successfully insisted they get down.

The second took place when some protesters near the end of the mile-long march (where I was stationed) began shouting “f— the CPD (Chicago Police Department)” as we passed a long line of cops blocking a side street. I yelled, “knock it off,” and they did!

The shouters were part of a small group of radicals (they marched under a red flag with a hammer and sickle) that later stopped in front of the Chicago ICE headquarters to hold a breakaway mini-rally. Unfortunately, they also blocked the last thousand or so marchers from proceeding. It took about five minutes to clear a path for the march to continue.

This same group stayed in the streets at the end of the march (and beyond the police permitted time). They eventually dispersed, but not without several television news outlets emphasizing the potential for confrontation with police, who, I should add, showed admirable restraint throughout the day.

A few pictures before getting on with the health care news that caught my eye this weekend.

Most of those who will lose coverage are already working

I don’t like criticizing the mainstream media because overall they have done an excellent job informing the public about the depredations of the Trump regime. But one issue continues to rankle: Accounts that claim millions will lose coverage due to work requirements.

The Associated Press, whose articles are the mainstay for national reporting for the vast majority of what’s left of America’s newspapers, reported over the weekend that national work requirements for Medicaid recipients would cause 5.2 million people to lose coverage over the next decade. That is fully 65% of the 8 million people who will lose Medicaid under the House-passed bill.

The story goes on to quote Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who has tried to sound like he is protecting Medicaid (because so many of his constituents are on it). “I’m for it because I want people who are able bodied but not working to work,” he said.

But it isn’t work requirements per se that will get people thrown off the rolls. According to the latest data, there are only 2 million people who are on Medicaid without care-taking responsibilities and not working full- or part-time. Some of them are retired.

The large majority of people who lose coverage will be those frustrated by the need to sign up twice a year instead of once. Or fail to properly fill out onerous paperwork. Or fail to get past other roadblocks government bureaucrats, especially those in GOP-run states, will throw in their way.

These are not work requirements. These are hassle-factor requirements. Up the hassle factor, reduce the rolls.

The same will be true for the food stamp program and low-income people on Medicare who now get help with their cost-sharing responsibilities when they seek care.

All these measures are unpopular, as the AP pointed out near the end of its story. Sixty percent of Americans believe the bill will weaken Medicaid; half say the legislation will increase family’s health care costs; and 7 in 10 adults said they worried it would negatively impact nursing homes, hospitals, and other health care providers, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll taken in May.

A green light for VA discrimination?

The Guardian reports this morning that the some Veterans Administration hospitals are amending their non-discrimination rules to allow doctors and other medical professionals to deny care to anyone who is unmarried, from a rival political party or engages in union activity. They’re justifying the change by citing the Trump executive order entitled “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government.”

The U.S. edition of the British newspaper reported that VA hospitals’ bylaws previously said medical staff could not discriminate against patients “on the basis of race, age, color, sex, religion, national origin, politics, marital status or disability in any employment matter.” The new bylaws eliminated “national origin,” “politics,” and “marital status” from the list.

The VA is the largest health care system in the U.S. with 170 hospitals and 26,000 doctors serving more than 9 million veterans annually.

A VA spokesperson said the changes were a mere “formality” required to stay in accordance with federal law. Dr. Arthur Caplan, head of the ethics department at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, called the new bylaws “extremely disturbing and unethical.”

“It seems on its face an effort to exert political control over the VA medical staff,” he said. “What we typically tell people in healthcare is: ‘You keep your politics at home and take care of your patients.”