Ben Shapiro: “There's some good studies that actually demonstrate that Medicaid coverage is no better than you having no coverage”
Shapiro on tax cuts for the wealthy: “The only people paying taxes in The United States of America on an income level are the people in the top quintile”
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From the February 26, 2025, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show
BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): So the House Energy and Commerce Committee is responsible with coming up with $880 billion in the savings. But the reason the Democrats are saying it's all coming from Medicare and Medicaid is because the House Energy and Commerce Committee presides over programs like Medicare and Medicaid. So House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, he, of course, is suggesting that's exactly where all the cuts are gonna come from. They're gonna come from Medicare. They're gonna come from Medicaid. They're not gonna come from Medicare. President Trump does not want any cuts to Medicare. Medicaid is a bit of a different story, and we'll get into that in a moment because the truth is Medicaid is one of the great boondoggles in American public policy. We expend literally hundreds of millions of dollars a year. We expend literally hundreds of billions of dollars a year on Medicaid, and the returns on Medicaid are truly atrocious just in speaking in terms of public policy, speaking in terms of health outcomes.
There's some good studies that actually demonstrate that Medicaid coverage is no better than you having no coverage and just going for emergency care to the hospital. Why? Because the reimbursement rates on Medicaid are so low that doctors don't even take Medicaid. Good doctors don't like taking Medicaid because the reimbursement rates are pennies on the dollar of what they could earn from private insurance. Medicaid is in fact a giant government make-work program that does not have particularly good outcomes. But just as with every giant government make-work program, it has now become a third rail of American politics.
Hakeem Jeffries and Democrats are, of course, going to suggest that it's tax cuts for the 1%, and on the basis of that, it's gonna be cuts for the poor. Let's be realistic about this. The only people paying taxes in The United States of America on an income level are the people in the top quintile. In terms of net taxes paid, net of benefits received from the government, the only people paying any level of net income taxes in the United States are people in the top income quintile. Everybody else is receiving on net money from the federal government. So if you're gonna cut taxes, how who who else presumably is going to have their taxes cut? How would that work? By the way, it also happens to be the case that the Trump tax cuts disproportionately affected people in actually the middle income quintiles.