The US House of Representatives narrowly voted 215–214 to pass legislation that puts 8.6 million people at risk of losing Medicaid coverage as Republicans who voted in support of the bill, keep falsely promising that it ensures the government-funded insurance program will be sustainable.
The deciding vote was cast by New Jersey Congressman Tom Kean Jr., who had pledged not to cut the Great Society health care program.
A member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, Kean previously provided a crucial vote to advance Republicans’ plan to enact the largest cuts to Medicaid in history that would lead to millions of Americans losing health care, threaten the closure of hospitals across the country, and also levy a hidden tax on Medicaid enrollees.
Overlook Medical Center, located in Kean’s district, is projected to lose $3 million under the House Republicans’ plan.
Kean reportedly “walked past dozens of people in wheelchairs, disability advocates protesting Medicaid cuts, who lined the halls outside the hearing room” and refused to say a word before casting his committee vote.
During that panel debate, Kean voted down amendments to protect Medicaid and lower prescription drug prices.
After the House passed the cuts, Kean lied, “I worked to protect the integrity of the Medicaid program by ensuring that benefits go only to the program’s intended beneficiaries.”
Kean, in an attempt to justify his support for slavery, said, “This bill makes it clear that individuals receiving Medicaid benefits who are under 65 years old, are able-bodied, and have no dependents, must contribute to their community for at least 20 hours per week — whether through pursuing education, employment, or volunteering.”
New Jersey’s Medicaid program would lose $3.6 billion — nearly a quarter of the federal funding it expected next year — if the budget Kean voted for became law.
The 1,116-page bill would cut $300 million from hospital aid, impose work requirements on thousands of low-income adults, and eliminate health insurance coverage for 360,000 New Jersey residents.
Medicaid covers 1.8 million New Jersey residents who are disabled, poor, and elderly, including 60% of all nursing home beds and 40% of the state’s births.
In a brazen assault on the most vulnerable, this draconian bill doesn’t merely trim Medicaid—it savagely dismantles a lifeline for millions of struggling families, ripping away healthcare from the sick, the elderly, and the impoverished with cold indifference.
All the while, it showers obscene riches upon the gilded elite and corporate titans, lining the pockets of billionaires and profit-hoarding conglomerates with lavish tax handouts that mock the plight of everyday Americans.
To add insult to injury, it funnels rivers of taxpayer gold into the Pentagon’s bloated war machine and supercharges ICE’s merciless deportation apparatus, prioritizing militarized borders and terrorizing immigrant communities over healing a fractured nation.
Despite his denials and excuses, trust fund baby Tom Kean Jr. supports a grotesque feast for the powerful, paid for with the blood of the powerless.