Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: See.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: 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. How about making an escape to a really
special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a
quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of Asheville is
your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe
you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get family
and friends together for a big old reunion, Cabins of
Ashville has the ideal spot for you where you can
reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter.
Nestled within the breath taking fourteen thousand acres of the
Pisga National Forest, their cabins offer a serene escape in
the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Centrally located between
Asheville and the entrance of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.
It's the perfect balance of seclusion and proximity to all
the local attractions, with hot tubs, fireplaces, air conditioning, smart TVs,
Wi Fi, grills, outdoor tables, and your own private covered porch.
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.
Speaker 2: Hi Pete, how are you doing today?
Speaker 1: I'm doing all right? How are you sir?
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: Correct. So what we're going to do then, is we're
going to allocate the surguts and services price on your
political affiliation.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: 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. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos
for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or
just your family stories all told through images. That's what
your photos and videos are. They are your life told
through the eyes of everyone around you and all who
came before you, and they will tell others to come
who you are visit creative video dot com. So now
Tom Tillis has a fan kind of in the media.
One Sarah mckinne. If the name rings a bell. Sarah
Peckne used to be a writer for the McClatchy papers,
for the Charlotte Observer, you're in town, and now she
works over at USA today. She's a national columnist, and
so she's writing to a national audience and wants to
let people know. Like she goes way back with Tillis
and she calls him the moderate Senator. Sarah Pequano calls
Tillis a moderate senator who said he would not support
the bill based on how it would impact Medicaid recipients.
It's not really though what he said. 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.