Grifters Gonna Grift

With President Donald Trump’s July 4 deadline drawing near, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told POLITICO on Tuesday night he believes the Senate is “on a path” to start voting on the megabill Friday.

But he’s got several fires to put out first. For one, he’s under immense pressure to water down the Medicaid provisions the Senate GOP is counting on for hundreds of billions of dollars worth of savings.

Speaker Mike Johnson is warning in private that Senate Republicans could cost House Republicans their majority next year if they try to push through the deep Medicaid cuts in the current Senate version, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the matter.

That comes as Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) cautions GOP senators that those same cutbacks could become a political albatross for Republicans just as the Affordable Care Act was for Democrats…

“[Barack] Obama said … ‘if you like your health care you can keep it, if you like your doctor we can keep it,’ and yet we had several million people lose their health care,” the in-cycle senator told reporters Tuesday. “Here we’re saying [with] Medicaid, we’re going to hold people harmless, but we’re estimating” millions of people could lose coverage.

GOP leaders are trying to ease concerns by preparing to include a fund to help rural hospitals that could be harmed by the reductions, even as Thune insisted Tuesday “we like where we are.” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who’s been pushing for the fund, said while that “helps lessen the impact,” she remains “concerned about the changes in the funding for Medicaid in general.”…

Nobody hates his own supporters more than Donald Trump.

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— Clean Observer (@hammbear2024.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 2:29 PM

…GOP lawmakers have also included provisions in their so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” to crack down on the health care provider tax that states charge health care providers to help fund Medicaid, particularly in rural areas. Under the new proposal, the federal government would limit reimbursement to states, with some conservatives citing “abuse” of the program by undocumented migrants in blue states.

A cap or freeze on that fee would cost rural hospitals, like the Hermann Area District Hospital, billions of dollars in funding, according to providers, physicians, hospital associations and even some Republican lawmakers. They include Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who argued the provision would “defund” rural hospitals.

Dr. Michael Rothermich, the chief of staff at the Hermann hospital, said it is already treading water with current funding levels…

The hospital has just three full-time physicians on staff to service patients in two counties, where 1 in 4 rely on Medicaid.

“There are fewer and fewer people to take care of it and fewer and fewer resources to try and do what we need to do to take care of people,” Rothermich said.

In southern Missouri, Karen White, the administrator for Missouri Highlands Health Care, said the new provisions could mean they need to prioritize which patients to care for.

“I think we will see loss of life, maybe not immediate, but if chronic conditions go untreated for an extended period of time, it does result in lower quality of life, less people working,” White said. “We’ve lost three hospitals in the last 10 years in our region, and that has left Missouri Highlands as the only form of health care.”

Missouri Highlands is a federally qualified health center, or FQHC — a community-based health care provider that relies on federal funding to operate. White said 46% of the population there is on Medicaid, and Missouri Highlands is the only health care provider in a three- to four-hour radius…