Politicians on both sides of the aisle have been known to distort the truth for political advantage. But Democrats have taken this art form to a new level in an effort to mislead the American people about President Trump’s recently passed Big Beautiful Bill (BBB).

The Wall Street Journal is calling out these Democrats in a recent editorial called No One is Gutting the Safety Net. The WSJ editors have often criticized President Trump, especially concerning his new use of tariffs, but they strongly defend his BBB when it comes to criticism of Medicaid.

They say, “Democrats and their media collaborators always distort GOP policy, but the coverage about the big budget bill has kicked free of the earth. Allow us to temper the histrionics about “gutting the social safety net” with a few facts about Medicaid, food stamps and Republican priorities.”

“By now you’ve seen the headline in every outlet: The Republican law will soon toss millions from Medicaid and cut the program to the bone. But annual spending on the health entitlement will grow over the next decade even with the bill’s roughly $1 trillion in estimated savings. Medicaid spending has risen by roughly 60% since 2019, and the bill’s intent is to try to bend Medicaid’s trajectory closer to the bad old days of 2020.”

“Democrats and some Republicans have offered cynical distortions that pregnant women in poverty and disabled children will suffer. But Republicans are trying to address the program’s enormous ObamaCare expansion to prime-age adults above the poverty line, and note the details of those who will allegedly lose coverage.”

They tell us that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), in a letter last month about the House bill, said 4.8 million won’t comply with the bill’s part-time work requirement. That should be a warning about the country’s social condition. The work requirement doesn’t apply to anyone who is disabled, pregnant or caring for a child younger than age 14. Volunteering 20 hours a week or enrolled in school? You can get Medicaid.

The WSJ editors say, “Don’t buy the Democratic talking point that the working poor will be lost in red tape as they try to prove they’re on the job. States have handled work requirements in food stamps and cash assistance for decades. As the Foundation for Government Accountability notes, when Arkansas experimented with such requirements in Medicaid, “enrollees only had to report work once, and it was easy to do so.” The state cross-referenced wage and employment data and folks could also self-attest online or call a hot line. The Democratic position is that Medicaid should be a free universal benefit for men who refuse to work. The other main provision is tamping down state scams to hoover up more federal dollars. The main losers here are large hospital systems that have been doing well on the largesse.”

This comes as no surprise since Democrats, especially Progressives, have been pushing for total government control of healthcare, socialized medicine, for over a hundred years! They believe every American should have government provided, and government controlled, healthcare. What they won’t tell you is that this leads to limited access to care, rationing of care and denial of care to the elderly and others deemed unworthy of care based on their life expectancy and contribution to society. This is the reality of every socialized healthcare system that currently exists in the world.

The WSJ editors go on to say, “The GOP bill also includes sensible measures such as asking states to check their Medicaid expansion rolls every six months and more scrutiny on ObamaCare subsidies. That is necessary because the Biden Administration waved millions onto health entitlements. The Paragon Institute estimates that 6.4 million people are enrolled in fully subsidized ObamaCare plans but don’t meet the eligibility criteria. Apparently, this is what Democrats support.

The bill’s changes to food stamps are also modest and rooted in the tenet that work is central to upward mobility. As a refresher, the program currently requires able-bodied adults without dependents to work about 20 hours a week—or lose benefits after three months. That 90-day dispensation allows those who suffer a setback time to get back on their feet.”

But here is the not at all radical reform proposition: More of those who rely on benefits for longer need to be working. The GOP bill would expand the current work requirement to cover more able-bodied adults, including some parents with older children in school and those in their 50s and early 60s. The law also tries to tighten up waivers that states have abused to eliminate the work rules. The other major change is asking states with high improper payment rates to have skin in the game and pick up a share of benefit costs, which are currently billed 100% to the federal taxpayer.

These are common-sense ideas that have public support, though most voters aren’t hearing a defense from Republicans. Here is the abiding lesson for the GOP: Ducking the hardest reforms, public groveling, the bill’s eleventh-hour $50 billion blowout for rural hospitals—none of it will stop dishonest Democratic attacks. There is no substitute for defending your own ideas.

The editors have a warning for Republicans: “Democrats think they can ride the Medicaid scare into a midterm victory, but there’s still time for the GOP to lay out the facts. Roughly a quarter of Americans are on Medicaid, which is worse than private insurance. Food aid tops $100 billion a year and no longer shrinks as it once did when the economy is growing. America is a generous society that cares for the vulnerable. But it should also be a land of opportunity, not a European welfare state.”

The Republicans have the upper hand in this debate but only if they get the facts to the American people. They can’t depend on the mainstream media to do it for them.

Americans pay more for healthcare than any other developed country in the world. What’s more, the cost of healthcare is rising faster than nearly every other measure of the U.S. economy.

Lawrence Wilson, writing for The Epoch Times, tells us the National Health Expenditure—the total amount paid for health care through public and private means—has risen faster in recent decades than inflation, household income, gross domestic product (GDP), the population, and even the price of housing. Americans collectively spent $4.9 trillion on health care in 2023, six times more than on national defense. No other country spends this much. As a percentage of GDP, the United States spends one-third more than Germany and France and more than double what China spends.

You might say it’s worth it if we are the healthiest people in the world, but we’re not. Americans are not healthier than people in comparable nations, according to leading health care indexes, and they do not live as long. “We’re wealthy but sick,” Jackson Hammond, a senior policy analyst at Paragon Health Institute, told The Epoch Times.

The American health system is complex, so there are multiple reasons for rising costs. Chief among them is the increasingly poor health of the population, according to experts. Americans spent an average of $1,500 apiece on out-of-pocket medical expenses in 2023. That’s $6,000 for a family of four. But that’s the tip of the iceberg. Total spending was 10 times that amount: $14,570 per person, more than $58,000 for a family of four.

Some of that money came from employers who paid all or part of employee health insurance premiums and from other third-party payers. But most came from taxpayers. Federal, state, and local governments contributed more than half of the dollars spent on health care in the United States. The federal government spent more than $1.8 trillion on health care in fiscal year 2023. The budget deficit was $1.7 trillion that year. Most health care dollars, 51 percent, went to hospitals and outpatient providers such as doctors and laboratories. Prescription drugs accounted for about 9 percent.

Spending has increased rapidly. Out-of-pocket spending grew by 7.2 percent in fiscal year 2023. Payments for hospital services increased by more than 10 percent, and prescription drug spending increased by 12 percent.

What is driving up the cost of healthcare?

Americans are older and sicker than they were even 30 years ago, which has driven spending increases. “A significant percentage of the American population has a chronic condition,” Orriel Richardson, executive director at Morgan Health, told The Epoch Times.

Chronic conditions are very costly, Richardson said, because of the increased number of doctor visits, medications, and other treatments they require, often for a lifetime. Many of these diseases are brought on or worsened by lifestyle factors beginning at a young age, according to Reyn Archer, a physician and former congressional chief of staff.

The United States leads the developed world in deaths from diabetes, as well as deaths from chronic liver, kidney, and respiratory diseases, according to Peterson-KFF’s Health System Tracker. The U.S. population is also aging. The median age in 1960 was 29, with just 9 percent of the population being 65 or older. In 2023, the median age was 39, and 18 percent of Americans were 65 or older.

New treatments are often expensive. New medications are currently driving overall costs up, according to Richardson.“ The cell and gene therapy world [gives us] a greater number of personalized, high-tech science that could be really successful,” she said. “But you have to pay for it.” That includes drugs such as Ozempic and Rybelsus, which are approved for treating Type 2 diabetes in the United States, and Wegovy, which is approved for weight loss.

A one-month supply of Wegovy was priced at $1,349 as of March 2024, according to KFF. Medicare payments for three drugs in this category rose from $57 million in 2018 to $5.7 billion in 2022, a 1,000 percent increase in five years. More than 11 percent of U.S. adults have diabetes, and more than one-third are obese, according to the National Institutes of Health. Some 17 percent of American children are obese also.

Unintended Consequences of Legislation

Given the complexity of the U.S. health care system, small adjustments, however well intended, can bring unintended results. Experts often cite the Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) as an example. The MLR is a provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)- better known as ObamaCare- intended to limit insurance company profits. It specifies the percentage of premiums an insurer can retain for administrative costs and the percentage that must be paid for medical services. For a large group insurance plan, an insurer must pay 85 percent of the money it receives to health providers or refund it to customers.

“With the MLR, one of the only ways for insurers to make more money is to spend more on health care, which then inevitably raises premiums,” Hammond told The Epoch Times. The average premium for family coverage increased by 22 percent from 2018 to 2023 and by 47 percent since 2013. The ACA was fully implemented in 2014.

This is a far cry from the famous promise President Obama made that ObamaCare would “save every American family over $2500 per year.” In reality, ObamaCare drove up healthcare costs by mandating that every insurance policy cover procedures that not everyone needed – like mammograms for men and prostate exams for women. This “one size fits all” legislation contributed much to the rising costs of healthcare in America.