Tag: health
MAGA Voters Like Trump's Big Bill -- Until They Learn What It Does

MAGA Voters Like Trump's Big Bill -- Until They Learn What It Does

Reported by Phil Galewitz

Nearly two-thirds of adults oppose President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” approved in May by the House of Representatives, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released on June 17.

And even Trump’s most ardent supporters like the legislation a lot less when they learn how it would cut federal spending on health programs, the poll shows.

The KFF poll found that about 61 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents — and 72 percent of the subset who identify with Trump’s “Make American Great Again” movement — support the bill, which would extend many of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts while reducing spending on domestic programs, including cutting billions from Medicaid.

But when pollsters told survey respondents about the bill’s consequences for health care, opposition grew, including among MAGA supporters.

For example, after being told that the bill would decrease funding for local hospitals and increase the number of people without health insurance, support among those who back MAGA dropped more than 20 percentage points — resulting in fewer than half the group still backing the bill.

Ashley Kirzinger, KFF’s director of survey methodology and associate director of its Public Opinion and Survey Research program, said it’s no surprise polling shows that party affiliation affects how most of the public views the bill.

“But the poll shows that support, even among MAGA supporters, drops drastically once the public hears more about how the bill could impact local hospitals and reduce Medicaid coverage,” she said.

“This shows how the partisan lens wears slightly when the public learns more about how the legislation could affect them and their families.”

KFF is a health policy research, polling, and news organization that includes KFF Health News.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who won passage of the legislation in the chamber he controls by a single vote on May 22, has insisted the bill would not “cut Medicaid.” The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which calculates the effects of legislation on the nation’s deficits and debt, says the measure would reduce federal spending on Medicaid by $793 billion over 10 years, resulting in nearly 8 million more people becoming uninsured.

The bill is encountering strident opposition from the health industry, most notably hospitals that expect to see large cuts in funding as a result of millions of people losing Medicaid coverage. The House-passed legislation would increase the frequency of eligibility checks and require that most nondisabled adults regularly prove they are working, studying, or volunteering at least 80 hours a month to keep their coverage.

“This is common sense,” Johnson said May 25 on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.” “And when the American people understand what we are doing here, they applaud it.”

Critics say the bill marks the latest attempt by Republicans to roll back the Affordable Care Act.

As the Senate moves toward a possible vote on its version of the legislation before Independence Day, the KFF poll shows Medicaid and the ACA are more popular than ever.

About 83 percent of adults support Medicaid, including large majorities of Democrats (93 percent), independents (83 percent), and Republicans (74 percent). That’s up from 77 percent in January, with the poll finding the biggest jump in favorability among Republicans.

Medicaid and the related Children’s Health Insurance Program cover about 78 million people who are disabled or have low incomes.

About two-thirds of adults hold favorable views of the ACA, the most since the law’s enactment in 2010, as recorded in KFF polls. The law has only been consistently popular with a majority of adults since about 2021.

Views of the ACA remain split along partisan lines, with most Republicans (63 percent) holding unfavorable views and most Democrats (94 percent) and independents (71 percent) viewing it favorably.

The poll found other indications that the public may not understand key provisions of the GOP bill, including its work requirements.

The poll finds two-thirds of the public — including the vast majority of Republicans (88 percent) and MAGA supporters (93 percent) and half (51 percent) of Democrats — initially support requiring nearly all adults on Medicaid to prove they are working or looking for work, in school, or doing community service, with exceptions such as for caregivers and people with disabilities.

However, attitudes toward this provision shifted dramatically when respondents were presented with more information.

For example, when told most adults with Medicaid are already working or unable to work, and that those individuals could lose coverage due to the challenge of documenting it, about half of supporters changed their view, resulting in nearly two-thirds of adults opposing Medicaid work requirements and about a third supporting them.

The poll of 1,321 adults was conducted online and by telephone June 4-8 and has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Bobby's MAHA Mania: Die Now, Eat Healthier Later

Bobby's MAHA Mania: Die Now, Eat Healthier Later

On Tuesday Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited Indiana, where GOP Gov. Steve Braun, a former Senator and business owner, unveiled nine executive orders that underscored all the contradictions in the Make America Healthy Again movement.

The positive aspects of his program included:

  • Preventing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s low-income beneficiaries from using food stamps to buy sugar-sweetened soda or candy;
  • Annual physical fitness testing in the state’s schools;
  • Subsidies for Indiana farms to grow more nutritious foods; and
  • A study of dyes and chemical additives in the food supply.

On the downside, he ordered:

  • Work requirements for SNAP beneficiaries; and
  • A campaign to root out “improper spending” from “eligibility errors” in the Medicaid program, which he claimed accounts for 28% of all Medicaid spending in the state.

To sum up, then, Indiana, like most GOP-run states, is taking minor steps to improve diets and physical fitness, which will take years to show results in the form of better health and reduced health care spending. Meanwhile, the state, whose businesses spend more on their health insurance than any other state, will be moving quickly to eliminate thousands of people from receiving SNAP benefits or government-funded health insurance. Both moves rely on setting up bureaucratic roadblocks to beneficiaries affirming their eligibility status.

Taken together, the SNAP and Medicaid cutbacks will increase food insecurity among the very poor while forcing many to postpone care for their chronic diseases, which will be treated later, more expensively and with poorer outcomes, including a higher level of mortality. Allowing Medicaid to cover more people “improved health outcomes, including lower mortality rates from cancer, cardiovascular disease, liver disease, and maternal mortality,” a Kaiser Family Foundation issue brief noted in December.

Blue states are doing more to protect health

As with much of his tour to promote MAHA, which kicked off last week in Utah with Kennedy praising its governor for removing fluoride from drinking water, the HHS secretary’s visit to Indiana ignored states that are doing far more to promote the positive aspects of his agenda. Yesterday, in next door Illinois, the state senate passed a bill that would prevent foods containing four harmful additives from being sold starting in 2028. Democratic Gov. Jay Pritzker supports for the bill, which should easily pass the Democratically-controlled House.

The banned additives included brominated vegetable oil (BVO), potassium bromate and propylparaben, which having been linked to cancer or toxic effects on the heart, reproductive, and endocrine systems. Each has been banned in the European Union. The Illinois law also bans use of Red Dye #3, whose elimination starting in 2027 the Biden administration’s Food and Drug Administration finally ruled last December. The FDA concluded more than three decades ago the dye was carcinogenic.

For decades, food industry lobbying has largely paralyzed action by the scientists in the FDA’s food division, which failed to police not just food additives, but excess sugar and salt and other harmful ingredients in processed foods. The Trump administration’s massive cutbacks in personnel at the agency, and the fear that has instilled in those who remain, makes it highly unlikely the FDA will be making regulatory changes at the federal level anytime soon.

Kennedy’s heightened attention to the issue has given states political room to act. Illinois followed in the footsteps of California, which passed a similar law in 2023. Lawmakers in at least 20 states have introduced similar bills. Several, including deep Red West Virginia, are GOP-run.

Proponents are making the same argument everywhere: There are safer, less costly alternatives. After protests in Canada, Kellogg’s changed the dyes used in its Fruit Loops and Apple Jack cereals to concentrated carrot juice, watermelon juice and blueberry juice.

Major food companies, whose CEOs met recently with Kennedy, worry that there will be a patchwork quilt of state regulations that will make it difficult to market products nationally. “What’s happening in the states like Indiana is going to drive change,” he said today.

Actually, Indiana, whose farmers are leery of challenging their major customers in the food processing industry, is only going to “study” the issue. It is mostly the Democratically-run states that are taking the lead and actually doing something about it.

Merrill Goozner, the former editor of Modern Healthcare, writes about health and politics at GoozNews.substack.com, where this column first appeared. Please consider subscribing to support his work.

Reprinted with permission from Gooz News.


RFK Jr Waffles As Second Unvaccinated Child Dies In Measles Outbreak

RFK Jr Waffles As Second Unvaccinated Child Dies In Measles Outbreak

An eight-year-old Texas child died of pulmonary failure as a result of measles, marking the third confirmed measles death and the second death of a child from measles to occur in the United States in decades. Both children were unvaccinated.

“[T]here are 642 confirmed cases of measles across 22 states, 499 of those in Texas,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on X.

Kennedy also announced that he was traveling to Texas to offer condolences to the family of the recently deceased child.

While the infamous anti-vaxxer failed to mention that the majority of cases are in unvaccinated children, he did admit that the MMR vaccine is the “most effective way to prevent the spread of measles.”

As the measles outbreak rages on, Kennedy has admitted that the MMR vaccine is the most effective way to fight against the disease, while also undermining the necessity of vaccinations. In public appearances, such as on Fox News with Sean Hannity, Kennedy said it was better to get infected with measles than to be vaccinated.

Texas HHS has confirmed that, while most confirmed cases remain primarily in the western part of the state, new cases have emerged in central Texas and a concerning rise in the northeast region. Meanwhile, New Mexico has reported more than 50 cases, and Kansas has reported 24.

At the same time, Kennedy’s nonprofit Children’s Health Defense Fund continues to promote dangerously uninformed science about vaccines and measles, falsely claiming that poor medical treatments are to blame for the recent deaths. The organization is also pushing vitamin A supplements, which not only can’t cure nor stop the spread of measles, but can actually be toxic for children.

Outside of offering “comfort” to grieving families, Kennedy’s actions belie any meaningful scientific or medically proven solutions to stopping this public health nightmare.

As HHS secretary, Kennedy has slashed public health research budgets, fired tens of thousands of federal health care workers, and promoted anti-vaccine goons like David Geier.

So while Kennedy may occasionally acknowledge the importance of vaccines, his actions and continued encouragement of anti-vaccine rhetoric consistently undermines any public health efforts.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Too Little, Too Late: RFK Jr. Suddenly Is Promoting Measles Vaccination

Too Little, Too Late: RFK Jr. Suddenly Is Promoting Measles Vaccination

In the wake of the growing measles outbreak in Texas, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. published an op-ed on Fox News’ website over the weekend, urging Americans to … get vaccinated.

With the subhead “MMR vaccine is crucial to avoiding potentially deadly disease,” the infamous anti-vaxxer wrote, “Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons.”

Texas Health and Human Services first reported the outbreak in mid-January. The disease rapidly spread, reaching nearly 150 confirmed cases. The majority (if not almost all) of those cases are among children who have not received the MMR vaccine. Texas officials say the outbreak is the worst in almost three decades.

Last week, during Donald Trump’s bizarre Cabinet meeting, Kennedy glibly dismissed a measles-related death of a school-aged child as “not unusual.” It was the first measles fatality recorded in the U.S. in over a decade.

Kennedy has spent much of his career promoting anti-vaccine misinformation, notably amplifying debunked bad science connecting the MMR vaccine to autism rates in children. Kennedy, along with others in the anti-vaxx movement have contributed to declining vaccination rates, resulting in outbreaks like the one in Texas.

The Texas outbreak, which began in Gaines County and has now spread to eight more counties, had alarmingly low vaccination rates among its cases of school-aged children. This is not just by chance; It has been fomented by Mr. Measles and his anti-science allies for decades.

At the same time, the Children's Health Defense, the organization Kennedy founded and previously chaired, continues to promote false information about the Texas outbreak. On February 20, its official social media account blamed the outbreak on the MMR vaccine itself. Their claims have the same amount of evidence they have always had—zero.

Kennedy can write as many toothless op-eds as he likes, but as cases pile up Kennedy’s first order of business at the HHS was to gut the agency tasked with educating the public and preventing outbreaks like this one. Kennedy even abruptly canceled the FDA’s planned meeting for next flu season and paused multimillion-dollar efforts to develop a new COVID-19 vaccine to deal with new strains.

With the Trump administration’s history of mismanaging public health, and Elon Musk’s focus on destroying our government agencies, the future is only going to get more dangerous for Americans.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

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