NEVADA — Tonight on Battle Born Progress’ Out In Front webcast, we examine the legacy of Medicare and Medicaid ahead of the 59th anniversary of their passage. Joined by, Margarida Jorge of Health Care for America Now (HCAN), former Nevada Lieutenant Gov. Kate Marshall and Battle Born Progress Organizer Anwar Green, we also lay out the risks to the programs under the conservative agenda laid out in Project 2025 and how proposed rollbacks could threaten access to health care for hundreds of thousands of Nevadans.
“Next year, there’s going to be a huge fight, where a lot of conservatives are going to say, ‘We need to do something to rein in these programs, they’re going to collapse the federal budget,’” said Margarida Jorge, Executive Director of HCAN. “And they’re going to be saying that at the same time that they’re engaged in a debate about how to extend the Trump tax cuts. So any time you hear any politician of any stripe, talking about how we need to extend the Trump tax cuts, which is really tax cuts for people making over 400,000 a year, that should raise a flag for you because if we can afford to give rich people making over $400,000 a year yet another tax break, then there’s no reason we ought to be talking about Medicaid or Medicare.”
“During COVID, there was a lot of federal money flowing to states, but you found that Nevada, in particular, did not have the infrastructure to absorb that money and then to push it out into programs,” said Kate Marshall, former Nevada Lieutenant Governor. “And so while we might talk about funding, we have to build the infrastructure – for health care, for child care, for education, for these things – so that we can absorb federal funds. Right now we turn federal funds away, routinely. Routinely. Nevada will say no to federal dollars, because they don’t have the infrastructure. So we need to build the infrastructure, and that requires investment.”
“If people don’t have insurance, it costs us all more money to provide care for those people,” said Anwar Green, an organizer with Battle Born Progress. “And, of course, you have your conservatives who say things like, ‘Well, I’m not paying for that, not out of my pocket.’ Yeah, every time it’s out of your pocket. So it makes way more sense for us to support something that allows us all to pay less than something that causes everyone to pay more based on some principle that’s nonexistent.”
Today’s full show can be found on YouTube and Facebook.
###
