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Indianapolis Star
a day ago
- Business
- Indianapolis Star
Trump's tax bill is a wakeup call for Gen Z to engage in politics
Like many teenagers, I first heard about President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill the way I hear about most things: on TikTok. I was scrolling when a Washington Post video caught my eye. Familiar with our current president's flair for drama, the name alone – 'One Big Beautiful Bill' – stopped me. What could a bill with such a bold, bodacious title possibly have in store for us? I watched a few more. Then I started reading the policy breakdowns and the articles that weren't going viral. And what I found raised way more questions than answers. We're about to inherit a mess we had absolutely no say in. The 'One Big Beautiful Bill' is being celebrated as a tax overhaul meant to bring relief to hardworking Americans. On the surface, that sounds great. Who wouldn't want relief for hard working Americans? But when you look closer, you start to wonder: Which Americans are we talking about? Because this bill seems to mostly help the CEOs and hedge fund guys, not the people clocking in for double shifts or surviving on food stamps. Let's start with health care. This bill slashes $1 trillion in funding for Medicaid – which covers 1 in 5 Americans. It introduces a new rule: certain 'able-bodied' adults aged 19 to 64 must work 80 hours a month to keep their coverage. Sounds reasonable, right? If you're receiving support, it makes sense to contribute. But here's the truth: most Medicaid recipients already do. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly 65% of adults on Medicaid are working – often in unpredictable, low-wage jobs that don't come with steady hours or pay stubs. Think delivery apps, house-cleaning, self-employment. These aren't people cheating the system. They're holding it up. But the new rule doesn't just ask people to work, it asks them to prove it – online, on time, every month. For people juggling multiple jobs, unstable internet or no formal HR department, one missed upload could mean losing coverage. And this isn't hypothetical. We've seen this before. In 2018, Arkansas tested a policy like this and over 18,000 people lost their Medicaid coverage in under a year. Not because they weren't working, but because they got caught in the paperwork. Missed a deadline. Many didn't even know they'd lost their coverage until they were denied prescriptions. Hicks: Trump's tax bill will crush the rural voters who chose him The bill uses the term 'able-bodied' as the qualifying standard. But what does that even mean – and who gets to decide when there's no clear federal definition? Does this rhetoric account for people with chronic mental illnesses that don't show up on paper? For people struggling with non-physical disabilities? No one can say, and that's exactly the danger. When the language is vague, it becomes a tool to shut people out quietly, and without explanation. And Medicaid isn't the only thing on the chopping block. Other targets include food assistance programs like SNAP which helps over 40 million Americans buy groceries each month. The bill raises the age for work requirements from 49 to 65 for adults without dependents. According to the Congressional Budget Office, over 3 million people could lose SNAP benefits entirely. As someone whose family has previously relied on EBT benefits, I know what SNAP means to a household. For millions of kids, it's the reason there's breakfast on the table before school or a packed lunch at noon. But this bill would slash billions in food assistance and limit access for students – especially in high school and college. Opinion: Trump's tax bill will gut Medicaid in Indiana That doesn't just hurt the stereotypical 'welfare recipient.' It hurts your friend in AP Bio who gets free lunch and the teammate who can't seem to focus during practice because they skipped dinner. A cut to SNAP isn't just a budget line. It's something we'll feel in our hallways, on our teams, in our generation. The 'One Big Beautiful Bill' isn't beautiful for the people it leaves behind. If we don't start paying attention now to what's passed, who it hurts, and who profits – then more decisions will be made without us, about us. We may not have had a say in this one. But that doesn't mean we stay silent for the next. So keep reading. Keep asking questions. Keep showing up in your schools, your homes, your communities. And when it's our turn to speak, to vote, to write the laws and not just live under them – We'll be ready.
Forbes
2 days ago
- Health
- Forbes
Why People Leave Medicare Advantage Plans And Why It Matters To You
Over half of Medicare beneficiaries opted for Medicare Advantage plans in 2024, and the percentage is expected to climb to 60% by 2030, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Medicare beneficiaries can choose between Medicare Advantage plans (also known as Part C) and original Medicare. Original Medicare is coverage under Parts A and B of Medicare. Beneficiaries in original Medicare are encouraged to also have Medicare supplement (Medigap) insurance policies and Part D prescription drug policies. Medicare Advantage plans essentially bundle all that coverage into one plan and typically add benefits such as vision, dental, and hearing care. Medicare Advantage plans increased in popularity partly because of the additional benefits. Relatively healthy members of Advantage plans also tend to have lower out-of-pocket costs because they aren't paying premiums for Medigap and Part D policies. But about half of beneficiaries left their Advantage plans within five years, according to data from 2011-2020 published in the JAMA Health Forum. Some opt for a new Advantage plan while others switch to original Medicare. Before deciding to sign up for a Medicare Advantage plan, it's a good idea to know why people leave their Advantage plans. Some analysts believe the high turnover among Advantage plan members can influence how the plans are operated. If an Advantage plan's managers know most enrollees won't stick around for the long term, the plan might have less incentive to address long-term or chronic conditions of beneficiaries. The quality of an Advantage plan seems to have a significant effect on turnover. Plans that had five-star ratings lost only 23% of members after five years. While plans with four-star ratings lost over 41% of members after five years, and lower-rated plans had even higher turnover rates. Another study concluded cost wasn't a major factor in decisions to leave Advantage plans. Beneficiaries were more likely to be concerned about difficulties in accessing and receiving high-quality medical care. Another difference between original Medicare and Advantage plans is that an Advantage plan only covers care by a provider in the plan's network. In addition, some care must be approved by the plan before it will be covered. In original Medicare, the beneficiary can choose any provider who accepts Medicare and rarely needs approval from Medicare before receiving a treatment or care. Limits on the medical providers included in a plan's network as well as required approvals for treatments and care cause dissatisfaction among Advantage plan beneficiaries. The study found that beneficiaries in poor health were more likely to switch plans because of dissatisfaction about limits on providers and the need for approval of care. That finding is consistent with anecdotal reports I've heard from Medicare insurance agents over the years. They find that in the early years of retirement when people are relatively healthy, Medicare beneficiaries are happy with Medicare Advantage plans. The plans cost them less, and they don't need to visit doctors often. But when serious health conditions arise or more frequent care is needed later in retirement, people are likely to want to switch from an Advantage plan to original Medicare. Once the need for medical care increases, the limits on providers and approval requirements become more important. Generally, you can switch from an Advantage plan to original Medicare each year during open enrollment. But there's a catch. During a person's initial enrollment period for Medicare, insurers offering Medicare supplement policies are required to sell the policies without regard to a person's health history. But after the initial enrollment period, insurers generally can review an applicant's medical history and use it to decline coverage or charge higher premiums. Though a person legally can switch from an Advantage plan to original Medicare, the absence of guaranteed issue for a Medigap policy after the initial enrollment period might make the change impractical.
Time of India
6 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
A ‘100% American' farm workforce? That's delusional
Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of Want a job picking fruit? There are thousands available right now on the US Department of Labor's Seasonal Jobs website. Orchard work paying $19.82 an hour in Washington, $17.96 in Pennsylvania and $15.87 in West Virginia. Berry planting and picking jobs at $19.97 an hour in California, $16.23 in Florida and $16.08 in have to offer these jobs to US workers before bringing in foreigners on H-2A visas for temporary agricultural work. The sharp rise in H-2A issuance the past decade indicates that they haven't been getting many statistics offer some context for Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins' recent remarks that the agricultural workforce was headed 'towards automation and 100% American participation,' and that 'with 34 million people, able-bodied adults on Medicaid , we should be able to do that fairly quickly.' I'm confident that Rollins doesn't believe any of this. But after trying to get President Donald Trump to back off on deportations of farmworkers, briefly succeeding, then being overruled by guy-who-seems-to-be-in-charge-at-the-White-House-at-the-moment Stephen Miller, she had to come up with something to say. So let's unpack the Medicaid recipients. Almost two-thirds of the working-age adults on Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for the poor, already have jobs. Most of those who don't are busy with school or unpaid caregiving, or suffer from an illness or disability. A recent KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation) analysis of Census Bureau survey data found this left about 2.1 million Medicaid recipients aged 19 to 64 who were not working for some other reason in that there's no real justification for restricting the view to Medicaid recipients, while sending 60-year-old newbies into the fields would be crazy, I looked at numbers from the same survey (the 2024 Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey, available at the University of Minnesota's IPUMS-CPS) and found an estimated 2.1 million 18-to-44-year-olds — 59% of them men — who did not work in 2023 and did not name disability, caregiving or school as the according to the most recent jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2.3 million people were working for pay in agriculture and related industries in June. The number who are not US citizens is some fraction of that. So it'll be an easy swap, right? Well, no, unless the Trump administration plans to resort to forced labor. There may be some combination of technological innovation and higher wages that could lure more US citizens into farm work (want to operate berry-picking drones from your home computer for $50 an hour?), but it's certainly not going to happen quickly or Americans want to labor on farms because this is an affluent, urbanized (suburbanized, really) nation with ample less-grueling work on offer, and a prime-age (25-54) employment-population ratio that's near an all-time high. If government policy really were to shift to zero tolerance for not just undocumented immigrants but all noncitizens on US farms — which is what Rollins seemed to say — the short- and possibly longer-term outcome would be the collapse of American agricultural production. Already, the crackdowns have paralyzed farm work in some California statistics showing 42% of crop farmworkers to be undocumented come from an annual survey of just 1,500 to 3,600 workers, and may not be entirely reliable. One has to imagine that some farmworkers are wary of telling government survey-takers that they're here illegally. Plus, there's no sign in the survey results of the big growth that we know has happened in foreign farmworkers here legally on temporary visas. The survey also covers only crop farmworkers, who according to the USDA's quarterly farm labor survey make up about half of an overall hired-worker farm labor force that tops out in the summer at around 800, in turn is a lot less than the aforementioned 2.3 million agriculture and related industries workers estimated by the BLS from the Census Bureau's monthly Current Population Survey, with the difference partly definitional but also an indication that the available numbers on agricultural employment aren't ultra-reliable. The Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages compiled by the BLS from state unemployment-insurance records doesn't count workers not covered by unemployment insurance, and reported an average of 1.2 million farm jobs last year. It offers what may be the best breakdown, though, of where those jobs are these numbers, California has 34% of the nation's paid farm jobs. A 2022 analysis by the Center for Migration Studies of New York based on pre-pandemic Census data estimated that the Golden State accounted for 49% of the 283,000 undocumented agricultural workers in the US. The analysis also found that 70% of undocumented farmworkers had arrived in the US in the 1990s and 2000s — after the Immigration Act of 1986 had provided a path to legalization for an earlier generation and before increased border security made it much harder to cross over to the US and back undetected — and 88% were Mexican. The immigration wave of 2022-2024 appears to have been light on both Mexicans and wannabe farmworkers, so those numbers may not have changed all that much undocumented farmworkers are thus an experienced, aging bunch — in many cases quite skilled and hard to replace, but also facing bleak retirement prospects because while most have been paying into Social Security for decades, they've been doing so using fake IDs and won't be eligible for any benefits. For this and a lot of other reasons, widespread employment of undocumented workers is a bad thing. But I've heard many times from people in California's agricultural sector that they simply can't persuade US citizens or noncitizens with all-purpose work authorizations to take jobs in the sounds like a copout, but the evidence from H-2A visas does offer some support. To hire seasonal foreign workers, farmers not only have to offer the jobs domestically first, but also pay visa-holders prevailing local wages as calculated by the Department of Labor and provide transportation, housing and food. After decades of slow growth and complaints from farmers about the onerous requirements, the number of visas issued has tripled in the past decade, with Mexicans getting the overwhelming majority (other countries with significant numbers of H-2A recipients include South Africa, Jamaica and Guatemala).All in all the program, while not free of abuse, seems to be a successful effort to steer agricultural employment into legal channels, and so far there's no sign in the monthly visa numbers that Trump — whose own businesses are frequent users of H-2A and the smaller H-2B visa program for non-agricultural seasonal workers — is trying to slow it down. Immigration crackdown or no, a '100% American' farm workforce almost certainly isn't in our future.
Hamilton Spectator
10-07-2025
- Health
- Hamilton Spectator
Democratic leader Jeffries heads to Speaker Johnson's home state to decry cuts in Trump's tax law
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The top Democrat in the U.S. House is holding a town hall Thursday in Louisiana, home to Republican Speaker Mike Johnson and his deputy, to rally against the health care cuts in the GOP bill that President Donald Trump signed into law. Led by New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, Democrats are taking their case about Trump's signature second-term domestic policy priorities directly to the people with the event in Democratic-heavy New Orleans, outside the districts represented by Johnson in northwestern Louisiana and Majority Leader Steve Scalise in the city's suburbs and elsewhere. Jeffries had said during a nearly nine-hour speech in the House before a final congressional vote last week that restrictions on health care and access to food aid in the tax breaks and spending cuts package were 'immoral.' He pledged that Democrats would 'stand up and push back against it with everything we have,' though the minority party was unable to prevent passage. Democratic leaders believe the new law will sway voters before the 2026 midterms elections, when Democrats look to win control of the House and break the hold that Trump and the GOP have on Washington. The measure includes about $4.5 trillion in tax breaks by extending cuts made during Trump's first term, mostly benefiting the wealthiest Americans, and adding new ones including no taxes on tips. It also slashes clean energy tax credits and unleashes hundreds of billions of dollars for Trump's national security agenda, including for border patrol and deportations . The Republican leaders who stood with Trump at the White House as he signed the bill into law July 4 insist the measure will boost the U.S. economy, strengthen U.S. borders and ensure millions won't see a tax increase. 'With one big beautiful bill we are going to make this country stronger, safer and more prosperous than ever before,' Johnson said. The Congressional Budget Office estimates 11.8 million adults and children are at risk of losing their health insurance by the Republican law, which over time will make it harder to enroll in federal health care programs, including Medicaid and others created by President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act . Additionally, it estimated 3 million Americans will no longer qualify for food stamps, also known as SNAP benefits. The legislation reduces federal Medicaid spending by $1 trillion. Louisiana is among states expected to lose one-fifth of its Medicaid budget over the next decade as a result. An estimated 1.5 million people in Louisiana are enrolled in the health care program, and the policies could increase the uninsured population by more than 200,000, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. In Johnson's own district, some 38% of the residents are enrolled in Medicaid, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Most of the health care changes, including the new Medicaid work requirements on certain adults, will not begin until after the 2026 midterm elections, though a number of providers are already beginning to prepare for potential cutbacks. In the town hall, Jeffries and other House Democrats will seek to hammer home the bill's impact on Louisianans represented by Johnson and Scalise. The offices of Johnson and Scalise did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The evening event, hosted by Democratic Rep. Troy Carter, who represents the much of the city, is set to include co-chairs of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee and 'Louisianans impacted by Medicaid cuts,' according to a press release from Carter's office. 'Following the passage of the #BigUGLYBill, this conversation is more critical than ever,' Carter wrote in a post on Instagram. ___ Associated Press Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report. ___ Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
Winnipeg Free Press
10-07-2025
- Health
- Winnipeg Free Press
Democratic leader Jeffries heads to Speaker Johnson's home state to decry cuts in Trump's tax law
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The top Democrat in the U.S. House is holding a town hall Thursday in Louisiana, home to Republican Speaker Mike Johnson and his deputy, to rally against the health care cuts in the GOP bill that President Donald Trump signed into law. Led by New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, Democrats are taking their case about Trump's signature second-term domestic policy priorities directly to the people with the event in Democratic-heavy New Orleans, outside the districts represented by Johnson in northwestern Louisiana and Majority Leader Steve Scalise in the city's suburbs and elsewhere. Jeffries had said during a nearly nine-hour speech in the House before a final congressional vote last week that restrictions on health care and access to food aid in the tax breaks and spending cuts package were 'immoral.' He pledged that Democrats would 'stand up and push back against it with everything we have,' though the minority party was unable to prevent passage. Democratic leaders believe the new law will sway voters before the 2026 midterms elections, when Democrats look to win control of the House and break the hold that Trump and the GOP have on Washington. The measure includes about $4.5 trillion in tax breaks by extending cuts made during Trump's first term, mostly benefiting the wealthiest Americans, and adding new ones including no taxes on tips. It also slashes clean energy tax credits and unleashes hundreds of billions of dollars for Trump's national security agenda, including for border patrol and deportations. The Republican leaders who stood with Trump at the White House as he signed the bill into law July 4 insist the measure will boost the U.S. economy, strengthen U.S. borders and ensure millions won't see a tax increase. 'With one big beautiful bill we are going to make this country stronger, safer and more prosperous than ever before,' Johnson said. The Congressional Budget Office estimates 11.8 million adults and children are at risk of losing their health insurance by the Republican law, which over time will make it harder to enroll in federal health care programs, including Medicaid and others created by President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. Additionally, it estimated 3 million Americans will no longer qualify for food stamps, also known as SNAP benefits. The legislation reduces federal Medicaid spending by $1 trillion. Louisiana is among states expected to lose one-fifth of its Medicaid budget over the next decade as a result. An estimated 1.5 million people in Louisiana are enrolled in the health care program, and the policies could increase the uninsured population by more than 200,000, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. In Johnson's own district, some 38% of the residents are enrolled in Medicaid, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Most of the health care changes, including the new Medicaid work requirements on certain adults, will not begin until after the 2026 midterm elections, though a number of providers are already beginning to prepare for potential cutbacks. In the town hall, Jeffries and other House Democrats will seek to hammer home the bill's impact on Louisianans represented by Johnson and Scalise. The offices of Johnson and Scalise did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The evening event, hosted by Democratic Rep. Troy Carter, who represents the much of the city, is set to include co-chairs of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee and 'Louisianans impacted by Medicaid cuts,' according to a press release from Carter's office. 'Following the passage of the #BigUGLYBill, this conversation is more critical than ever,' Carter wrote in a post on Instagram. ___ Associated Press Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report. ___ Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
