San José, CA – On Friday, July 4, President Trump signed his “Big Beautiful Bill” of tax cuts for the wealthy, cuts to health insurance and food stamps for the poor, and more attacks on immigrants.

The tax cuts are so large that, despite historic cuts to Medicaid and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps), the federal government will be borrowing more than $300 billion more each year for the next ten years.

The new law cuts taxes about $450 billion a year over the next ten years, mainly benefiting higher income households. Using adjusted gross income, we can see the richer a household, the more money Trump and the Republicans’ new law gives to them.

Those in the top 20% of income, over $120,390 per year, get a $5753 tax break. The ones in the top 1%, over $649,005 per year, get a $29,585 tax break. And those in the top 0.1% highest income, over $3.3 million, get over a $100,000 tax break.

On the other hand, low-income households will actually pay more taxes and receive fewer and lower benefits from the federal government. The new law takes from the poor and gives to the rich, Robin Hood in reverse.

Those in the lowest 20% of income, under $13,350, will lose $695 by paying taxes and/or losing SNAP and Medicaid benefits. The next lowest 20%, those from $13,350 to $36,475, will pay $125 more in taxes and/or get less in government benefits.

The biggest cut to government funded health care is a $85 billion a year cut to Medicaid under the Trump/Republican Party law. More than 10 million Americans will lose their health insurance because of these cuts, and millions more will have to pay more for their health care.

Many rural hospitals that rely on Medicaid payments for their patients will fold up shop, creating more “health care deserts,” where patients have to travel an hour or more for hospital care. More than 25 million people in the United States do not have any health insurance and the cuts will make the situation even worse.

$30 billion a year will be cut from SNAP, and there are more cuts to programs supporting local food banks. Similarly, more than 40 million Americans are considered “food insecure,” meaning that they are not sure of feeding their household throughout the month, and the cuts to SNAP and aid to food banks will force more to go hungry and/or rely on unhealthy foods.

The new law also hits hard with almost $170 billion more funding to ICE and Border Patrol, meaning that they can expand their raids and terrorization of Chicano and Latino communities and workplaces in particular. At the same time, the new law limits families of immigrants, including U.S.-born citizen children, from accessing government-funded health insurance and higher education. It also makes immigrants pay more to apply for court proceedings and to send remittances home to their families.

Last but not least, the new law will require hundreds of billions of dollars more borrowing each year. The federal government budget deficit is already at $1.9 trillion this year, the largest ever outside of times of war or economic crisis. The law could lead to the deficit growing to more than $3.2 trillion a year, even assuming that there is no recession or major war for the next ten years. This will lead to higher interest rates, which will tend to slow down economic growth in the longer term.

#SanJoseCA #CA #CapitalismAndEconomy #Trump #BigBeautifulBill #ImmigrantRights #HealthInsurance #FoodStamps #SNAP #Medicaid #Feature

This is undoubtedly a big win for transgender and non-binary people across the state and a huge rebuke to traditional thinking when it comes to transgender and non-binary individuals seeking surgery to help with gender dysphoria. Gender Dysphoria is a newer term defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ (DSM) fifth edition (2013) as the distress a person feels due to a mismatch between their gender identity and their assigned sex at birth.

However, the movement for transgender and non-binary rights in Wisconsin and across the country can’t rest on this victory alone. Insurance companies are still a major gatekeeper for transgender and non-binary people. The struggle to take back and grow comfortable with our bodies sometimes but not always requires surgery.

The definition of what is medically necessary has been changing at a rapid pace since the 1960s. The earliest research in modern medicine has created a system of understanding that we are still rolling back today. The advent of the Kinsey model ranking the “level” a person is transgender and the misclassification of transgender people in the 1980s DSM-III have created lasting damage. The DSM-IV (2000) and DSM-V (2013) have made progress toward undoing the wrongs of the earlier flawed research.

There has been a push nationally for healthcare providers and health insurance companies to follow the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care (SOC) for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender Nonconforming People. According to WPATH’s SOC the overarching treatment goal is “lasting personal comfort with the gendered self to maximize overall health, psychological well-being, and self-fulfillment.”

WPATH is a big proponent of the informed consent model. Medical providers are coming around to the idea of informed consent, which removes or diminishes the role of gatekeeping mental health professionals when considering hormone replacement therapy (HRT). It must be noted that it’s still important to discuss hormones and transition with a mental health provider before going on HRT. However, transgender people sometimes feel HRT is important for their gender congruence.

Despite this victory in Wisconsin, the issues of access to healthcare still remain. While we remove barriers to receive gender-confirming surgery, financial stability is a serious obstacle for those seeking surgery. Income inequality is a common reality for transgender and non-binary people. According to the American Psychological Association’s (APA) survey, transgender people are four times more likely to have a household of less than $10,000 per year compared to the general cisgender population. The APA also reports that 47% of transgender individuals have reported workplace discrimination in regards to hiring, firing and promotion. Another 25% have reported they had lost a job due to discrimination on the basis of their gender identity – two things which could easily be solved with raising the minimum wage and strengthening a worker’s right to organize a union.

Those who are lucky enough to have healthcare may still be subjected to a for-profit plan, which are prone to denying surgery. The private insurance market is still woefully behind on transgender and non-binary issues. Private for-profit insurances have been allowed to drag their feet on progress, relegating these surgeries to being fee-for-service. The laws mandating that insurance companies pay for these surgeries are subject to incredibly weak interpretation.

The movement in Wisconsin has taken a big step forward in creating a future for transgender and non-binary individuals to reclaim their bodies. Transgender and non-binary people are subject to much shame and humility on a daily basis. Victories that allow the reclaiming of our bodies are a fundamental step in our long term happiness. There still needs to be a major push to remove the for-profit healthcare model so we all can achieve adequate and necessary medical care.

#KenoshaWI #PeoplesStruggles #transgender #Medicaid

San Jose, CA – On the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior’s birthday, Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) condemned the Trump administration and the Republican governor of Kentucky for the new work requirements for Medicaid. Medicaid provides health insurance for more than 74 million low-income and disabled Americans.

Masao Suzuki, a leader of FRSO who follows health care and the economy, said, “The hypocrisy of President Trump and Republican state governors knows no limits, as they claim to honor the memory of Dr. King while attacking everything that he stood for.”

On March 25, 1966, speaking to the Medical Committee for Human Rights, Dr. King said, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman, because it often leads to physical death.”

Masao Suzuki told Fight Back!, “This work requirement is just another example of the Trump administration and Republican state governors’ class war on poor and working people. Their continuing attacks on the Affordable Care Act [ACA or Obamacare], their foot dragging on the funding of the Children's Health Insurance Program [CHIP], and now this work requirement for Medicaid show that they want to make health care a privilege of the billionaire class that they represent. The FRSO sees health care as a right and supports the struggle for universal single-payer government health insurance.”

#SanJoseCA #Healthcare #frso #Trump #Medicaid