This is John Batchler, conversation with my colleague Elizabeth Peake about Medicaid.

Liz lays out the stats about how Medicaid has grown over these last years and why.

The point being that the Republicans, Elon Musk, Mr. Trump's administration,

propose cutting the waste fraud and abuse in the medical programs along with everything else in the

government. The opposition has chosen to claim that that is a cut to Medicaid. Liz lays out the

facts here and also the amount of waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid and Medicare that the government itself says

can be eliminated with attention.

Rispeak, more of this tonight.

Both presidents changed rules in the case of Obama.

It had to do with work rules.

In the case of Biden, it was all kinds of other sort of income tests and things like that

that definitely swelled the Medicaid rolls.

And, you know, to their discredit, in my view.

And so Medicaid roles are over 80 million Americans.

And remember, Medicaid was supposed to be for really poor people, low-income Americans, really for single moms

and people who were unable to fend for themselves.

Instead, it's become sort of just another entitlement.

But it's doubled over the past decade, and it's a strange double.

It's a strange thing that it is doubled because you've had the poverty

rate go from 14% to 11.5% in terms of the numbers, there were 48 million Americans on

living in poverty in 2013, and by two years ago that it dropped to 41 million.

So it's kind of ridiculous that Medicaid has just gone berserk, but it is something that Democrats know a lot of people depend on,

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