Republicans' risky fight on health care
Sidebar
The Washington Post
4.1 • 4.6K Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
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Summary
On this episode, The Washington Post's Libby Casey, Rhonda Colvin and James Hohmann break down some of the most controversial provisions in Republicans' giant spending and immigration bill: Provisions that would affect Medicare and the Affordable Care Act.
While the bill has already passed the GOP-controlled House, it might have a tougher time getting through the Senate, where some Republican senators have already expressed doubts – like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Ark.), who has said it is “wrong to cut Medicaid for the working poor.”
Plus, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) told a town hall last week that "we all are going to die," then doubled down in an Instagram video on Saturday. Is that a politically risky move – or just what Trump would do?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Look what happened. Is this crazy? We stand on the verge of the four greatest years in the history. |
| 0:08.5 | Make America great a game. How can you be against it? |
| 0:16.5 | The Senate is back in Washington taking up the bill that President Trump insists he once passed by July 4th. |
| 0:23.8 | That's the massive spending and immigration bill that Trump and his allies called the Big Beautiful Bill. |
| 0:28.9 | And in fact, that's the official name now, Rhonda. |
| 0:31.6 | It's the Big Beautiful Bill Act. |
| 0:34.4 | But Senate Republicans are considering all the details in this bill. They're facing some real |
| 0:38.5 | challenges on one particularly perilous issue, and that is health care. So Republicans are considering |
| 0:44.1 | cuts to Medicaid that could affect millions. They're also looking at changes to the Affordable |
| 0:48.9 | Care Act, known as Obamacare, one of those other names that sticks. And that could cut off |
| 0:53.9 | access to millions of Americans to that ACA marketplace. |
| 0:59.1 | Welcome to Sidebar from The Washington Post. |
| 1:01.3 | I'm Libby Casey, and I'm here with Rhonda Colvin and James Holman. |
| 1:04.5 | And today on the episode, we're going to talk about sort of the pitfalls and perils of |
| 1:09.3 | taking on Medicare, healthcare spending in this |
| 1:13.2 | country. Is it more dangerous to Republicans than Democrats right now? Who's got the messaging on this? |
| 1:19.2 | And also, what is the real substance of what they're doing? Let's start with Medicaid. |
| 1:24.3 | You know, Rhonda, Republicans are like, there's no cuts to Medicaid, nothing to see her folks, but it's a little more nuance than that. Talk to us about what's in this bill. |
| 1:32.8 | Yeah, so this is the House version of the bill that was passed before the Memorial Day recess. So the Senate now has it in their hands. And this has always been a big talker on the hill, is cuts to Medicaid. We know that |
| 1:46.1 | around 10 million people will lose their coverage, and that's an estimate by the Congressional |
| 1:50.8 | Budget Office if these cuts go through. One of the ways the cuts are designed, it's around |
| 1:57.5 | changing the work requirements of how many hours would be needed for a person to be able to claim Medicaid. |
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