00:00Um, uh, just to make sure you're in the right room, I'm Melissa Slotkin. I'm been your senator since January. Um, and what I thought I would do tonight, because I want to get to Q&A, is give you, number one, a quick sort of update, scene setter on what's happening in Washington, straight from a horse's mouth.
00:18I flew in yesterday to Grand Rapids, um, and we are now home for next 20 days in August. Um, so we are just, I'm just fresh out of Washington. I can't tell you how thrilled I am to be home and to be out of there. Um, and then I want to talk about, um, the what I put forward in the past month and a half, two months now, which is some sort of, um, plan to play some offense and not just defense when it comes to Donald Trump.
00:48I feel strongly about that. Okay. So, um, uh, as you heard, uh, um, representative Andrews talk about, um, the big, beautiful bill was signed into law on July 4th. Um, we voted on it in the couple of days before July 4th.
01:08Many of my peers who, you know, we were on state, we were on the Senate floor all night. Many of them voted for that bill while it was still being written. They never actually read the entire document. Um, and they were pressured and forced and, um, obliged President Trump and voted for that bill.
01:29Um, I want to go through very quickly because Joey alluded to it, but I want to make sure people understand what this means for every single person in this room and every single person out there watching. Okay. Um, number one, every single person here, every single Michigander and every American is either at risk of losing their health insurance
01:53or having the price or having the price of your insurance or having the price of your insurance go up. Every single person. And I can confirm that without a shadow of a doubt because I was touring this morning Corwell Health up in Grand Rapids.
02:05Right. I was doing a visit there and they're opening their books. They're showing you their spreadsheets of what is going to happen to their emergency room, to their birth and delivery center, to their children's pediatric cancer unit.
02:19Right. Because of the loss of two big things, actually three big things. One, the Medicaid cuts that are coming, right, in the next year and a half. The major changes that sort of allocate money differently to hospitals.
02:34Which mean that our hospitals are losing $6 billion over the next 10 years in the state of Michigan alone.
02:43They're losing because the ACA or Obamacare subsidies starting this November are going away for people who are not rich.
02:53Who are not rich, right? People, for instance, a family of four making $129,000 in Benton Harbor, two kids.
03:02They are now going to lose their subsidies for their health insurance. They're going to get notice this November that their bill will go up for their insurance next year by $5,500.
03:13Okay. A couple living in St. Joe's, two 60 year olds, empty nesters, who make $82,000 a year, are going to be told that their insurance will go up by $13,000 next year.
03:30Now, what happens when you're making $82,000 a year and your insurance goes up by $13,000?
03:36Well, some people say, I'm just, I'm just, I can't pay that. I'm just not going to have insurance. I'm going to take a risk. I'm going to go without.
03:44So between the Medicaid cuts and the ACA cuts, our hospitals are looking at a real phenomenon of people walking into their ERs with no insurance, right?
03:58People still have heart attacks. People still have car accidents.
04:02And so what does a hospital do when there's a bunch of people who aren't insured, right, and they walk through their doors?
04:10They got to make ends meet. They want to keep their unit, you know, their pediatric cancer unit open.
04:16They will openly tell you, they're now saying publicly, that we are just going to have to charge people with employer-provided health insurance.
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