A reality check for those who think cutting Medicaid will strengthen their own health care affordability

 In response to those who think cutting out waste and abuse of Medicaid will reduce their ownhealth care costs:,  There is no free lunch here...we will all be paying the price in some way...in heartbreak or in money. When a rural hospital closes, it affects far more than those on Medicaid. How do we know this? Because that is what happened before Medicaid and Obamacare.  It is why both came into being.  Cutting Medicaid in the name of what little there is of waste, fraud, and abuse is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  It also affects the self-paying patients, depriving them of timely and easy access to hospital care. It affects the families who have to take over the care at home of those who can no longer afford in nursing homes, because the nursing homes serving rural communities close. It affects all those employed in the closed hospitals and nursing homes who become unemployed. It can be a matter of life and death, with long and deadly ambulance or budget-busting helicopter rides for those in a medical crisis.

What about those hospitals and nursing homes in both rural and urban America that survive, and the patients who use them, both who lose Medicaid and Obamacare, and those who do not and are still self-paying?. If non-paying patients reach the nearest hospital, they become a charity-funded case, covered by a shift of higher bills for paying patients to make up the difference. It means greater use of hospital emergency rooms, the most expensive form of primary care available, as sicker patients who delayed attention have to depend on them. If surgery, diagnosis, specialists are needed, and there is no money to pay for follow-up care, either the patient dies or they go bankrupt, and no one gets paid....the provider, the hospital, the doctors, or other creditors..

 Expect MAGA-dominated states to do what Alaska did: demand supplemental federal aid or special carve-outs. In the federal budget. Expect the blue states to raise state and local taxes to cover the loss, partially..

The Truth about Waste and Abuse in Medicaid – Center For Children and Families   A study and comment by Georgetown University

Why I am concerned about rural health: A personal note. I have lived in a rural health area for the past 35 years, and we have just this year gained an ER 5 minutes away, instead of 30. The nearest nursing home is 45 minutes away. The nearest full-service hospital is an hour and a half by car, over a mountain pass. My husband was a part time doc here ..ob gyn. but. no anesthesiologist  so all deliveries were done in Denver 60 miles away, where he also had an office. Women mostly stayed in Denver close to term.

Is it unconstitutional for ICE to snatch people off the street or in ag fields because they look undocumented?

It may sound unAmerican for ICE to snatch from streets and chase through fields those who look like they could be undocumented, detain them, and ship them off to a domestic or foreign gulag without a chance for the subject to object or even prove citizenship, birth or special refuge status, or be guilty of any crime more than a minor traffic violation or lack of documentation, but it may also be unconstitutional. The ICE idescriminate action of snatching and shipping off to detention just got slapped with a lower federal court ruling temporarily stopping that practice in regards to Los Angeles and  Ventura County/  The judge put on temporary hold the ICE practices that had agrigultue workers running for their lives and resulting in the death of a long time undocumented resident and farm worker and any number of landscape workers and day laborers. Their dragnet has even trapped citizens and properly documented migrants. Now in play is the 4th Amendment that refers to the right of people (not just citizens) to protection from warrantless seizures,   requiring probable cause to charge someone of a crime, and due process.  This one may end up in the Supreme Court. 

Judge Blocks Trump Administration From Carrying Out Indiscriminate Immigration Raids In Los Angeles

The 4th Amendment applies to protect people from warrantless searches and seizures and pertains to the concept of probable cause, a threshold of evidence required to charge a person with a crime. I'm no attorney, but I did find some illuminating, credible sources..

The administration contends they are only going after those with  criminal background, yet 70% of those apprehended and detained by ICE do not have records.  That one is an easy lie to prove: https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-trump-immigration-crime-ice-criminal-dangerous-violent-99557d9d68642004193a9f4b7668162e?

Fourth Amendment | U.S. Constitution | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute

From Google AI with references to source: 

• "The people" is not limited to citizens:

  While the Fourth Amendment uses the phrase "the people," it has been interpreted to include anyone within the United States' physical borders, not just citizens. 
• Supreme Court precedent:

  The Supreme Court has addressed this issue in the case United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, ruling that the Fourth Amendment does apply to non-citizens within the U.S. 
• Due process and equal protection:

  The Fourteenth Amendment also guarantees due process and equal protection under the law to all individuals, including non-citizens, which further reinforces the idea that the Fourth Amendment's protections are not limited to citizens. 

One of the more disturbing comments to a recent post came from a person who claimed the president of the US was only for its citizens, as if to imply the president had no responsibility to honor the rights of undocumented migrants. ., I replied, the president was responsible for both the rights of the undocumented and those of the documented and citizens are wrong to claim the President of the US is only for citizens and not for non-citizens. The President may be elected by only citizens, but the responsibility of the office to comply with the Constitution regarding non-citizens means the president is not just like a president for just citizens, but for all in the USA. I wondered if it was her way of rationalizing a belief that undocumented migrants had no rights, or did it mean to her that she would only respect what Donald Trump said about immigrant rights? 

  The issue of undocumented migrants' rights has certainly risen in the context of the discussion of the 14th Amendment regarding birthright citizenship and other provisions of that amendment, since the wording clearly states it applies to "persons," not just citizens. That one will soon be in the hands of the Supreme Court, as a lower federal court has just ruled Judge Blocks Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order in Class-Action Challenge - The New York Times

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Are the ICE detainees and deported due to racial targeting?

Keeping track of tariff impact on domestic prices. Already felt.

 Pricing data shows Trump's tariffs are making some US-made products more expensive in an extensive Business Insider report. Import goods prices have already increased 3% and domestic competitors have used this cover and lack of foreign competition to raise theirs by 2%.   In time, all of this will begin to impact inflation rate.   That Trump has made American life more affordable is one promise he is not keeping. 

Trump restores Ukraine aid. Finally.

 That guy is a slow learner. Flattery and bootlicking got him nowhere with Putin. Then Europe stepped up to the plate and took control of the situation from Trump. Maybe he realized the train to save Ukraine had left the station. The strangest part of this is that Trump claims he never knew the US aid to Ukraine had been suspended.. Then what was he telling Putin on those private telephone calls? There are reports that Trump truly did not know the aid had been halted...and that the culprit was an undersecretary..If so, that guy needs to be fired. The Backstory: Why US Military Aid to Ukraine Was Halted

msn.com

Trump to Resume Sending Weapons to Ukraine

The U.S. will send additional defensive arms because Moscow is hitting Kyiv “very hard,” the president said.