Washington D.C. – NPR reports that dozens of Congressional Republicans including Mike Lawler (R-NY-17) have been running YouTube ads desperately trying to mislead voters about their votes for the largest cut to health care and Medicaid in U.S. history under Donald Trump’s ‘Big Ugly’ Act to bankroll another tax giveaway to billionaires and big corporations. Ad topics include: “Medicaid fraud, rural hospitals and affordability.”
Among the false claims made in Lawler’s propaganda blitz: that he voted to “Protect 100% Medicaid Benefits” for seniors, children, and the disabled, and that he ‘F[ou]ght Fraud’ by keeping undocumented immigrants from receiving Medicaid benefits despite the fact they have never been eligible in the first place.
In reality, an estimated 461,894 New Yorkers have been pushed out of Medicaid and CHIP since the Big Ugly law’s passage. New York hospitals alone are expected to lose nearly just under $40.9 billion annually, and now at least 71 New York health care providers are at-risk, announced cuts, are closing, or have closed, with rural communities hit especially hard.
“The nearly half a million New Yorkers in need that Rep. Mike Lawler helped kick off Medicaid and CHIP to pay for more billionaire tax breaks would probably consider that a 100% benefit cut,” said Brad Woodhouse, president of Save My Care. “It’s rich that Rep. Lawler now claims to be a champion of Medicaid after taking a chainsaw to the program and leaving millions of vulnerable seniors, kids, people with disabilities, and rural Americans with nowhere else to turn for health care. Lawler should own up to prioritizing tax breaks for greedy corporations and people like Elon Musk, not run from the harm his actions caused everyday New Yorkers.
Added Woodhouse: “Congressman Lawler could not care less about fraud. If he did, he wouldn’t be lying about immigrants who aren’t even eligible for Medicaid benefits while letting Donald Trump off the hook for pardoning several wealthy scammers that were actually convicted of billions of dollars in health care fraud. And with out-of-control health care costs Americans’ #1 economic worry, Rep. Lawler will have a hard time convincing New Yorkers that the GOP-made affordability crisis is all just a ‘hoax’.”
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