We're Fighting for Healthcare
Our president is such a funny guy. He (or Stephen Miller) created the AI-generated post portraying Congressman Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero and Sen. Chuck Schumer saying that Democrats are shutting down the government so that they can give trillions of dollars in healthcare to “illegal aliens.” Yes, Trump and the GOP are racists. I am pretty certain that the reason my husband and my private Medicare supplement insurance premium went up 18% this month is because of undocumented workers in Manitowoc.
Here is Sen. Chris Murphy's (D-CT) response: “We are shutting down, because Donald Trump thinks he’s a king. This was totally avoidable, but Donald Trump told Republicans, ‘Don’t negotiate with Democrats.’... We didn’t shut down when Joe Biden was president. Why? Because Democrats, when they were in the majority, took their responsibility to govern seriously, reached out across the aisle, and built bipartisan funding agreements with the Republicans…. We aren’t asking for the moon. We are simply saying, we don’t want health insurance premiums to go up by 75% on the American public. That’s what Republicans have engineered as a means to pay for their giant tax cut for billionaires and corporations. We aren’t asking for some big new healthcare program. We’re simply saying, if we’re gonna vote for a budget, we want that budget to not increase premiums on families across this country by 75%, bankrupting American families. You know what else we want? We want this president to start acting… lawfully.”
Then we go back to the crazier name calling. The website for the Department of Housing and Urban Development showed a banner reading: “The Radical Left is going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their $1.5 trillion wish lists of demands. The Trump administration wants to keep the government open for the American people.” Melody Schreiber of The Guardian reported that the Department of Veterans’ Affairs said in a statement that “Radical liberals in Congress” were attempting to shut down the government “to achieve their crazy fantasy of open borders, ‘transgender’ for everybody and men competing in women’s sports.”
The laughs keep coming. Remember our former State Senator, Duey Stroebel? He is now in charge of the Midwest Region for HUD. If you go to the HUD website, you will see the illegal banner “The Radical Left in Congress Shut Down the Government.” That silly Hatch Act.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez discusses why we need to fight for healthcare on Chris Hayes’ show. Watch here.
I discussed the cost of healthcare last week. The number one cause of bankruptcy in Wisconsin is not being able to afford healthcare. The last time we had a government shutdown was the last time Trump was president. Republicans love to tear things down, but they sure do not know how to govern or negotiate. Remember Timothy Snyder’s first rule in his book On Tyranny: “Do not obey in advance.” Ocasio-Cortez reminds us that, “We have too much to save, and protecting people is too important of a task for us to give up.”
BadgerCare is Medicaid here in Wisconsin. In Ozaukee County, 7.6% of the county is on BadgerCare. It is hard to find the specific data as to how many Ozaukee residents get their healthcare via the Affordable Care Act, but statewide, 313,579 access health insurance through that exchange. If the giant cuts in healthcare in the Big Beautiful Bill are not pulled back and the reduced premium tax credits are gone, people will see their premium rates go up 75%. One example of those rate increases on the current exchange is a monthly premium of $350 that would go up to $612; that is with a $8,500 deductible! That will affect all of our healthcare costs, even those paid for by employers.
Keep being active. Protest in Port Washington this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m., and then join us later that day from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. at our office in Grafton to meet Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Judge Chris Taylor. (Register here.)
On Wednesday, Oct. 8, we will be hosting The Big Beautiful Bill Forum at 7 p.m. at our big beautiful office.
No Kings Day Protest in Cedarburg: Oct.18, 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.
Last but not least, make sure you buy your tickets for our annual Fundraising Gala on Nov. 4 at Shully’s in Thiensville. (Scroll down for more info.)
Thanks for reading.