Mike is a lifelong public servant, having led Massachusetts' Medicaid program, a $23 billion agency that serves nearly 2 million residents. He is an expert in connecting health care and homelessness services, and he has seen the power of integrating primary care, treatment, and social supports to keep people healthy and housed.
House Speaker Mike Johnson stated that the work requirement helps 'return the dignity of work to young men who need to be out working instead of playing video games all day.' However, Saucedo countered that most benefit recipients are already employed, and research indicates that such requirements do not enhance employment or earnings.
"They want some fresh take, fresh eyes on homelessness in San Francisco," a source familiar with the hiring process said, pointing to Levine's experience with Medicaid, a federal program that is a public health insurance plan for low-income residents and is called Medi-Cal in California.
Driving the news: Musk took to X on Friday to celebrate the release of Medicaid data on claims, medical procedures and payments from January 2018 through December 2024. "Medicaid data has been open sourced, so the level of fraud is easy to identify," Musk wrote. "DOGE is not a department, it's a state of mind." The Department of Health and Human Services collects Medicaid claims data from states that administer the program. Until now, much of the information has been fragmented and difficult to access.
"There are some that say he's a dictator. Well, no, he's not a dictator - we voted him in," she said. "I think it would all be a lot better if we didn't resist the federal government and instead just got together and said, 'Hey, I'm with you ... Let's sit down, work together and clean it up instead of fight it'."
Republicans in the House of Representatives can't get much done - except when it comes to attacking the trans community. Then they can still manage to pull out all the stops. Just last week, Republicans, joined by a handful of Democrats, passed a bill to ban Medicaid from funding any gender-affirming care for minors. That was on top of another bill that they passed to criminalize gender-affirming care for trans youth.
So far 14 of the 17 of largest pharmaceutical companies have agreed to lower US drug prices. United States President Donald Trump announced new agreements aimed at lowering prescription drug prices. On Friday, alongside leaders from Bristol Myers Squibb, Gilead Sciences, and Merck, among other leading pharma giants, the president announced deals that would cut prices on their medications to match that of the developed nation with the lowest price.
They would rather have us focus in and debate a misunderstood and vulnerable one percent of the population instead of focusing in on the fact that they are raiding everyone's healthcare in order to pay for tax breaks for the wealthiest one percent. All Republican politicians care about is making the rich richer and attacking trans people. They are obsessed with trans people. I actually think they think more about trans people than trans people think about trans people. They are consumed with this.
"They would rather have us focus in and debate a misunderstood and vulnerable one percent of the population," she said during a press scrum outside the Capitol with out Rep. Julie Johnson (D-TX) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), "instead of focusing in on the fact that they are raiding everyone's health care in order to pay for tax breaks for the wealthiest one percent."
We're here to discuss two bills coming up, HR 498 and HR 3492, Mitchell said. The two bills, introduced this week for a planned vote on Wednesday, both targeted gender-affirming healthcare for children the first time Congress has voted over national care bans and a major escalation of anti-trans rhetoric from conservative US lawmakers.
The Medicaid ban took effect in July. A provision tucked into President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill cut the funding for health care providers that offer abortions and receive more than $800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements each year for basic reproductive health services such as birth control, prenatal care and cervical cancer screenings. Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider, pledged to continue performing the procedure. It also challenged the Medicaid ban in court, a fight that is ongoing.
The administrator for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Mehmet Oz, recently claimed that an audit revealed more than $1bn of federal taxpayer dollars were being spent on funding Medicaid for illegal immigrants, but experts say the audits were unrelated to immigration, and that rhetoric like this could make immigrant families regardless of legal status afraid to seek necessary medical care.
Donald Trump shows me what's politically possible, he said on The Breakfast Club on Monday. Trump shows me what presidents can do when they want to do it. Donald Trump shows me what can be said if you're willing to say it. It's not about what can't be done; it's about who has the political will to do it. I don't want to hear a peep from Democrats about nothing until they get the ball to say what's really on their mind in regards to this country and this world," he said.
Many Massachusetts residents are at risk of losing their Medicaid coverage, SNAP benefits, and more under the cuts. Massachusetts officials launched a new online dashboard this week designed to clearly show how federal funding cuts are negatively impacting Massachusetts under the Trump administration. All told, the state has lost about $3.7 billion due to President Trump and a Congress beholden to him, according to the dashboard.
What do Democrats want in their continuing resolution? They inserted a provision to undo a provision in theOne Big Beautiful Bill that ended taxpayer-funded health care benefits for illegal aliens. Democrats' proposal would require Medicaid to pay more for emergency care for illegal aliens than Medicaid does for American patients who are disabled, elderly, or children, she said, continuing: I'd also like to add, because some were asking dishonest questions yesterday about emergency rooms.
The US government is hurtling towards its first shutdown in six years, with no signs congressional leaders are near agreement on legislation to continue funding beyond the Tuesday night deadline to prevent workers from being furloughed and agencies from shutting their doors. Congress's Republican majority is pushing legislation to fund the government through 21 November, but Democrats have refused to vote for it unless it includes a series of concessions centered on healthcare.
