Cannon: Tillis opposed ending NC's Medicaid scam (07-02-2025--Hour2)

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free, rite to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. I know I covered some of this the other day when Tom Tillis, US Senator from North Carolina announced that he would not be seeking another term, and it was in response to the fight that he was having with Donald Trump over the Big Beautiful Bill and specifically the change in Medicaid. And there's a bunch of money that the Senate version and is there's a bunch of money that the Senate version has tied up in this medic reform that's going to be used as an offset to some of the tax cuts. And Tillis took great offense to this provision. And again I went over this in some degree on Monday, but since there has now been another piece written over at National Review by a fellow named Michael Cannon, Michael F. Cannon, and if you are unclear, And we had a call in the last hour from Dave and he asked, like why Tillis was opposing it? And this is going to explain why Tillis was opposing the big beautiful bill. At least his public statements indicate it is over this medicaid reform. Okay, Now, keep in mind North Carolina resisted expanding Medicaid, which was part of Obamacare when it was first passed fourteen fifteen years ago. And Obamacare first tried to force states to expand Medicaid, they got smacked down by the court saying you can't force the states to do that. So then they offered a higher reimbursement level, a ninety percent federal match basically to the states if they would expand Medicaid. And a lot of states, well, all the Democrat controlled states immediately said yes, yes, And because we care about people more than Republicans, we want them all to have free healthcare. Meanwhile, everybody's health insurance premiums went up. We pay more now for health insurance than we did before Obamacare. That's why Obama got the you know, the Washington Post Award for the biggest lie of the Year, which was, if you like your plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Neither one of those things were true. And we are still dealing with the fallout of all of this. And when the Republicans attempted to repeal Obamacare, Can voted no because he hated Donald Trump. Thanks a lot for that. So all of this expansion of Medicaid, all these problems, and the acceleration of the costs, the explosion of these program costs, all of this stuff is tied directly to Obamacare. That's not talking about Social Security or Medicare. I'm just saying the Medicaid portion of this is tied directly to Obamacare. And while the North Carolina legislature refused to expand Medicaid for a decade and a half, they finally caved last year, the final year of Roy Cooper's term, where he had been beating the drum for expansion of Medicaid. They finally caved, and they finally did it. But they did it with this formula. They did it with a formula, and they said this would protect us in case the federal match declines, right, because that was the rationale for why they finally caved. The Republican leadership in North Carolina said we're going to go ahead and do this because at first, you know, we thought, oh, they're not going to sustain this. They're going to claw back the money. It's going to drop from a ninety percent reimbursement, it's going to drop, and so we didn't want to expand Medicaid. But after fifteen years, well, it looks like the Feds are not going to drop the number right there, They're still going to do this, and so that was the reason why they said they did it. And then of course, like a year and a half later, now here we are where they're going to be doing exactly what people like me warned would occur, because it has to occur because the costs are always going to be more than projected. They always are. They always are. So if we're just taking Tom Tillis at his word at face value what he said about the Medicaid program, here is the takedown of this position that Tilli suspoused from Michael camp. Tillis voted against advancing the Senate Republicans Corrupt and Irresponsible Budget proposal evidently because it isn't corrupt and irresponsible enough. So obviously Michael Cannon not a fan of the big beautiful bill. And for the record, I will tell you nor am I nor am I. They had a lot of different ways they could have done this. They could have done it clean. They chose not to. They chose to do it the way they did it the Republicans. I don't know if Trump is involved in all of the minutia of all of the different deals. I kind of doubt he is, but he might be. I don't know. I don't care. It doesn't matter to me because it's just another example in a long line of examples of Republicans behaving exactly the way Democrats do when it comes to this kind of spending. In fact, I mentioned last hour Ben Shapiro's podcast, and he highlighted these three different groups inside the modern Republican Party. Now where you have what he called the populist wing, which are generally the people in the populist wing are generally for low taxes and high spending. You might call that the Obama coalition. Right, we want low taxes, but we're going to keep spending. See. And this is the thing. Nobody wants to actually do the hard work and suffer any political repercussions for addressing the main driver of the deficits and the debt, which are the entitlements, social security, medicare. Those are the drivers of our debt. And they don't want to discuss it. They don't want to do anything about it. The last time somebody tried it was George W. Bush after he won re election, he said, I have political capital. I intend to spend it. And he proposed that the US allow younger people, not everybody, and it would be completely voluntary, but it would allow younger people to divert a small portion of their social security confiscations to put into the market rather than park it in the government where it makes like one percent or something. Instead, you could park it in like a mutual fund or something, and you could generate a larger return on that money. And he was savaged for it. And never again have any of these national elected representatives or senators gone and touched the quote third rail. So nobody wants to do it. Nobody wants to. And let me look at the battle over medicaid and food stamps. You start, you start doing like a work requirement and people like you're gonna kill people. They're able bodied, working age people. Why can't they get a part time job in order to qualify for the quote unquote free healthcare? So anyway back to the canon piece here. In a speech to his colleagues, till Us revealed that the Senate Republican's budget would end the scam by which the senator's home state, North Carolina, is forcing you, me, and other taxpayers in every other state to fund its Obamacare Medicaid expansion. Right, so, North Carolina is using everybody else's tax money for our Medicaid expansion. Till Us pledges not to vote for any budget unless it allows North Carolina to keep fleecing us. How does the scam work? Well, each state operates a medicaid program that offers healthcare subsidies ostensibly but certainly not exclusively to the poor. That's the idea, is that the way it actually works out not so much. Congress contributes to each state's Medicaid program in a manner that guarantees explosive spending and excessive waste, fraud, and abuse. I would submit this is a feature, not a bug. All right, If you're listening to this show. You know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app, and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place, so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently shows to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. I mentioned Ben Shapiro and his breakdown of sort of these different camps inside the Republican Party over in the US Senate, and I'm assuming it's over in the House as well. And this is just his assessment of it. You can agree or disagree, but he counts the populist wing, which we're for low taxes but high spending. There's the fiscal hawks who are for low taxes and low spending. I would put myself in that camp, by the way. And then there's another coalition sort of the tech bros ai green energy stuff. That was a major point of contention as well. So those were the three groups that were in conflict during this process. But Tom Tillis made the Medicaid reforms the focal point of his opposition to the Big Beautiful bill, and he gave a speech and he railed against it. We played the speech on Monday. Michael Cannon, writing at National Review, explains how every state operates its medicaid program okay, that offers healthcare subsidies. Congress contributes to each state's Medicaid program in a way that guarantees explosive spending and excessive waste, fraud, and abuse. For every one dollar that a state puts towards Medicaid, Congress matches it with something between one dollar to nine dollars. Right, So for every dollar a state spends, you either get a one for one match or up to a nine to one match. The premise is that Congress will contribute if the state sacrifices something to fund its own program. Right, So, if the state says, we want to fund Medicaid expansion, and so we're going to spend you know, a billion dollars on it, then Congress would say, Okay, you've made a tough decision to do this, so we're going to give you nine billion dollars max. Right. Already, this is a boon to state officials if they raise taxes by a dollar, inflicting one dollar of political pain on the voters on the tell, well on the taxpayers, I should say, and whatever ramifications that means for their political prospects at the ballot box. For every one dollar of political pain they inflict, Medicaid lets them hand out between two to ten dollars of political goodies. The difference comes from taxpayers in other states. Little wonder that Medicaid spending has doubled since twenty thirteen. Some state officials have created an even sweeter deal for themselves. They tax hospitals or other healthcare providers the one dollar, so they're not even extracting it from taxpayers and bearing the political pain there. They're hitting healthcare providers with the one dollar. They then use that dollar to extract one to nine dollars in the federal matching funds, and then they give the original dollar back to the hospital. These are called provider taxes. It lets states siphon hundreds of billions of dollars from taxpayers in other states, using the federal government as the conduit to do so. And they don't have to sacrifice anything. So the Republican legislature that expanded this last year, they bear no political cost because we don't see it. Right. If people had to pay this or they had to raise taxes to pay for this stuff, people would be mad. Republican voters would be mad. But if you tax the healthcare provider and then give them the rebate in the exact amount that they were taxed, well, then you don't ever really see it. Cannon goes on to say North Carolina uses these scams to fund the entirety of its Obamacare Medicaid expansion. Basically you are funding more of North Carolina's Obamacare Medicaid expansion than is the state of North Carolina, which isn't putting up a dime. State law says, now, one point here, North Carolinians do pay federal taxes too, so it's not a straight up like forty nine other states are paying for us. So I disagree with that. I'm quibbling over just like what percentage of the money North Carolinians are paying up to the federal government does eventually come back through this mechanism. But I think the point is still the same. The majority of the cost, vast majority of the cost is being subsidized by people in other states. And if you live in another state, that should irk you right because they created this mechanism. State law in North Carolina says that if the state ends up having to sacrifice anything to pay for this expansion, in other words, if the provider tax falls short of covering one hundred percent of the state's ten percent share of the program spending, because that's the ninety ten percent split that Obamacare offered to expand Medicaid, that was the sweetener. We'll give you ninety percent, We'll cover ninety percent of the cost in North Carolina. North Carolina has been for fifteen years. They were saying we're not paying the ten percent, we're not expanding and doing an extra ten percent to fund the program until they figured out the mechanism here and adopted it to quote tax the providers and then give the money back from the Medicaid because they get the because they're getting the money from Medicaid, the providers when they see somebody, they treat a patient, they're getting that money back, so they make their money back. But the law that North Carolina passed said that if we fall short of the ten percent, then the Obamacare's Medicaid expansion dies. It's a trigger in the law. The Senate in there in the big beautiful bill would not end provider taxes. It doesn't end them. It just reduces the percentage. It would curtail them from like six percent down to three percent something like that. So it puts a cap on that so the states so they're not going to give anything more than like three and a half percent. But that then trips the trigger in North Carolina. And that's what Tom Tillis was arguing against. That's why he didn't want this thing to pass because it trips the trigger, which means the expansion in North Carolina ends for fourteen years. North Carolina refused to implement Obamacare's Medicaid expansion because state officials did not want the state to pay even the ten percent share of the program spending that fell law specifies. Obamacare's medicaid expansion was so unpopular that voters and lawmakers, including then House Speaker Tom Tillis, weren't even willing to buy it at one tenth of its price in twenty twenty three, Obamacare's supporters, in other words, every Medicaid supplicant hospital in the state. In twenty three, they finally got the legislature to approve the expansion by concocting this financing scam, which ensured the taxpayers in other states would pay the cost. And two, they included a statutory kill switch that would scuttle the program if it ever cost the state anything. Legislators could always kill the program if they wanted to. They could do it themselves, but that would require raising taxes. Tillis and North Carolina's overpriced hospitals rightly fear that if tar heel state voters see even a fraction of the cost of Obamacare's Medicaid expansion. It would not withstand their wrath. So that was why Tilli's vote to know. Here's a great idea. 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Choose from thirteen cabins, six cottages, two villas and a G eight lodge with eleven king sized bedrooms. Cabins of Ashville has the ideal spot for you for any occasion, and they have pet friendly accommodations. Call or text eight two eight three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at cabins Offashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. But's it over? Head? Over, I should say to the phone lines, here is Stan. Hello, Stan, welcome to the program. Hi Pete, how are you doing today? I'm doing all right? How are you sir? Well? Okay, I'm going tood okay. I want not want to contrast something here. If you just google it, you can look up the average cost of a bill to go to the emergency room, depend on where you live, between twenty to twenty six hundred and three thousand dollars to say twenty one hundred dollars, and most I would say, probably ninety percent of emergency rooms busits could be handled through the urgent care. Probably urgent care is they only take insurance or private pay. So the average bill there, depend know where you live, was one hundred two undred dollars I said one to fifty. So how long do you think a country can pay three thousand dollars for something? Because for most people who don't even have the one hundred or two hundred dollars, they're going to go to the emergency room for sore throats. How long can you how long can you continue to fund something at the rate of almost three thousand dollars when the market says it's only worthing on fifty. So well, not in perpetuity, that's for sure. But that's the point, right, The point is to break the system. So people then demand that the ones who designed it to break will come in and somehow fix it. And how it will get fixed will be government more more government control or a government run system. Right, that's why they expanded manikey, right, and so and so. Then so then when they get to that point, how will they Because the market itself would allocate that service, Okay, so when the government controls it, what formula was the government used to allocate that service? And I want to ask you a question on that basis. When you said the ratio was one to nine billion dollars, how do they determine who gets the one and who gets the nine. I don't know that. I do not know. I think it there. Well they do, they peg. They peg part of it to the error rate. So if you have a large amount of errors that your state is making by making people by allowing people to join the roles and paying them out, and there's you know, fraud and abuse or whatever, if you have high error rates, I think you get less. I think that's part of the formula. So the courtion is when it gets to that point, how are they going to allocate who actually gets healthcare and who doesn't, like like like FA allocated aid to Elene, to Alaine to the hurricane. Well, yeah, I mean I've talked about this for well since two thousand and eight, when you know Obama started pushing all of this. There are only two ways to uh to ration by access or by price, And all products and services are ration They have to be so because there's not an infinite supply of it, So you have to ration by access or by price. And if you are going to go to a government run model where you're not going to ration by price, then that means you must ration by access, which means that certain people won't be able to get procedures or surgeries or whatever. They won't be able to go. They won't be able to get the stuff. And that's why you see long wait times for surgeries and procedures that in America take you know, a week or two to schedule, but up in Canada will take you two years. Correct. So what we're going to do then, is we're going to allocate the surguts and services price on your political affiliation. More No, I don't see that. And they're not going to be carting people to see what your political affiliation is before you walk in the door. No, they're just going to give. Yeah, they're gonna give blanket refuse. And we've covered stories going back, you know, fifteen years on this stuff over in in the UK where it's like, oh, this person you know was a smoker and so therefore they get pushed to the lower end of the line for a hip replacement or something like. They will make those types of decisions to ration. So Stan, I appreciate the call. I don't know what's going on with your phone there. It's very we were getting some interference there, but I appreciate the call. And look, this is the problem when you have people clamoring for free stuff. I want free healthcare, and now we know the cost of the free healthcare with the Obamacare marketplace. I've been over there, an absolute mess and way more expensive. In fact, hang on a second, I saw here we go. This is from Kevin. My family applied for Medicaid thirteen years ago when I lost my job. Only had it for a little while because we were still bill in the system. Back when North Carolina expanded Medicaid, we got a letter stating that we may now be eligible for it again. So twenty three, they were still in the system from years ago, so they're like, hey, do you want to get back in? So they solicited people. They're like trying to puff up the numbers. Right. They required my previous year tax returns. I did not think I could possibly be eligible, but was looking at twelve hundred dollars a month bill for a crappy marketplace plan for a healthy family of four. I've been self employed for twelve years now. There was hardly any subsidies on the marketplace because of how high my income was. I sent it in and they said we were approved this for Medicaid. So he's like, not get Kevin's not getting any subsidies because he makes too much money, but he qualifies for Medicaid. Do you see that this is the goal. It's to get people into the government provided voucher system, essentially free gov co healthcare. He says. I thought they made a mistake since my AGI adjusted gross income is six figures. So I sent them in emails telling them what my AGI is and I had them in writing reply saying no, my family was approved. This was a cya for me, is what that was. I could have afforded the twelve hundred dollars a month, but really didn't want to. Now multiply my situation by thousands of others in North Carolina. This is how look. I remember. The same thing occurred with the unemployment insurance when I lost my job in twenty eleven and I applied for unemployment insurance, applied for the unemployment benefits, and they were paying me five hundred dollars a week. And all I had to do was make a phone call into the state system and answer like three questions with the punch pad with the with the number pad, did you look for a job this week? Press one for yes, two for now did you get a job? One for yes, two for no like beobo boob, and then you're done. It's like, I can definitely see how people could become very accustomed to just pulling in two grand a month and not actually work, and then maybe doing side jobs off the books. You know. Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Mint Hill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. 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He was he was talking about the program and the reimbursements and that sort of thing, and that's going to end up. He never says this in the speech either, but that triggers the North Carolina law, which then takes down the Medicaid expansion portion, which would then rob Roy Cooper of his one you know victory. But she does acknowledge that she has never been one to feel warmly toward Tillis, but the reasoning behind his decision is shocking. If there was no room for moderates in the Republican Party, I am worried about where the country is headed. I love it. I love it when Democrats and media, but I repeat myself, I love when they play this game of like we're just giving you some good advice because we want you to be successful Republicans. Right. No, what she what she is doing is taking an opportunity to say I am for bipartisanship, I am for working across the aisle. He's a moderate senator, so now you can say these things. It's like, what's the old line about, you know, Democrats and media. But I repeat myself that they that they only give praise to Republicans when when they vote with Democrats or die, like those are the ones they concede defeat. They vote with the Democrats like you like, because they called John McCain all these terrible names, and then as soon as he conceded to Barack Obama, they were like what a statesman? They called Mitt Romney all these terrible things, and now we're hearing like, Oh, what I wouldn't give to have a true statesman like Romney. Again, they always play this same game. You are hitler while you are in opposition to them, but then when you die or you vote with them on something, now all of a sudden, you're the reasonable one. Or if you criticize Donald Trump, then you're like, you're one of the good ones. I mean, tomorrow you're gonna be hitler again if you oppose me, But right now you're one of the good ones, she says. And again, remember she's telling she's writing this piece at USA today in order to inform the nationwide audience about all of her background and knowledge of North Carolina because she was here. I don't know if she still is here, but so here's what she offers. Tillis did a lot to earn my distrust while serving in the North Carolina Senate. That's actually that never happened. Tom Tillis never served in the North Carolina Senate. Tom Tillis was the Speaker of the House. He was the Speaker of the House. He was not a senator. She says. There was Amendment one that was the marriage Amendment right codifying in the state constitution marriages between a man and a woman. There was the twenty twelve constitutional amendment that changed the state constitution so that only marriages between men and women would be recognized. There was the twenty thirteen Motorcycle Safety bill he supported, which snuck draconian restrictions on abortion access into a bill that was supposed to cover increased safety for motorcyclists. Do these things sound like moderate Republican positions? How do you label him a moderate but then say stuff like this, These don't seem like moderate position? Or are you saying these are the moderate positions? That's interesting? So what I'm to believe then that the draconian restrictions that were snuck into the bill, that's the moderate Republican position that you want to see more of. No, No, you're only calling him a moderate now because he crossed Donald Trump and that's of higher value to you. And Tillis is going to be retiring, so who cares? And by the way, just for the record, because I was here too and covering this when it happened, the draconian restrictions were simply to raise the health and sanitation standards in abortion clinics to match veterinarian clinics, like we in North Carolina. They didn't do any inspections. They would never like they shut down the inspections. They were just like wild West in this thing. Under Democrat administrations. McCrory comes in. Republicans are in control of the legislature and they're like, hey, you know what we should actually have like a standard like these are ambulatory medical centers, you know, like people walk in and whatever get procedures done. We should like be inspecting them at least as often as we inspect veterinarian clinics. You should meet the same cleanliness standards as a vet. And the left went nuts. They started wearing the costumes of Genitalia, you know, to the legislative building. She said. Somebody willing to occasionally stand up to Trump is better than someone with unshakeable loyalty to the president. If there's no room for someone with a lukewarm relationship with Trump in the Republican party, one must imagine that the Republican who'd come after will be a fervent supporter of the Maga agenda. I can believe I'm saying this, she says, But the state's voters deserve a moderate like Tillis, somebody who Roy Cooper can be. I mean, no, Sorr, I shouldn't say, someone who, when the time calls for it, will stand up to the president. The country deserves more legislators who are willing to go against their party. She does not mention that not a single Democrat voted for this big, beautiful bill. She has no words whatsoever for Democrats behaving in the way that she wants the Republicans to. I'm sure it's just an oversight. All right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetekallanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.