Douglas County Democratic Party

Tag: medicare

  • Milwaukee Chef Calls On Lawmakers To Strengthen The Affordable Care Act

    MADISON, Wis — Yesterday, a new report detailed the impact Republican attacks on the Affordable Care Act will have on Wisconsinites. Milwaukee chef Dan Jacobs spoke with Spectrum News, explaining that the ACA has helped him afford health care while living with a preexisting condition. Jacobs is one of nearly 300,000 Wisconsin residents who rely on the ACA for coverage, and premiums are expected to skyrocket as a result of Republican inaction.

    Spectrum News: Milwaukee chef testifies on Capitol Hill, calls on lawmakers to strengthen the Affordable Care Act
    By: Charlotte Scott | 12/10/25

    Milwaukee chef Dan Jacobs lives with Kennedy’s Disease, a rare disorder that weakens the muscles.

    “I am losing my ability to walk, talk, use my hands, basically any sort of motor skills,” he said. “It’s less aggressive than ALS, but pretty much the same.”

    He and his wife purchase health insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace. He said it keeps his medication costs low and has allowed him to open two restaurants.

    “The ACA offered the affordability and the stability to be able to open up my own business and not have to worry about a large investment in health care,” Jacobs said.

    “Without the Affordable Care Act,” Jacobs added, “I could be denied health insurance, or they could cover everything except my condition. So, the Affordable Care Act makes sure that insurance companies don’t do that.”

    Jacobs flew from Wisconsin to Washington to testify at a hearing on health care, in a subcommittee chaired by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. Jacobs urged the panel to “protect and strengthen the Affordable Care Act,” also known as Obamacare. 

    “The key principle that must guide successful health care reform is re-injecting consumerism and free market competition into health care,” Johnson said. “Obamacare took us in the opposite direction and failed to reduce health care costs.”

    Insurance premiums are expected to skyrocket next year due, in part, to ACA tax credits that expire at the end of the year. On Thursday, the Senate will vote on competing proposals to lower health care costs. Neither proposal is expected to pass, since Democrats and Republicans are unlikely to support each other’s legislation. Democrats want a three-year extension of the enhanced subsidies; the GOP bill expands health savings accounts but doesn’t even touch the issue of subsidies. 

    The committee’s ranking member, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, said an extension is needed now to prevent skyrocketing costs for consumers and until Congress can work out a different plan. 

    “There’s no question that we need to crack down on the brokers engaging in fraudulent behavior and take action to constrain health care costs,” Blumenthal said. “But let’s resolve to come together to do the right thing for the American people and extend these health care subsidies.”

    Jacobs and his wife will see their insurance cost increase by $550 a month in 2026. That’s almost $7,000 a year – and Jacobs said he doesn’t benefit from subsidies.

    “That’s the part, I think, that’s scary for people that do have subsidies,” Jacobs said. “You’re looking at an exponential rise from that.”

    He said he’s worried about his employees who also purchase insurance through the Affordable Care Act. If their costs jump to an unaffordable price, he said some might be forced to look elsewhere for employment.

    “People are going to have to make choices,” Jacobs said. “And unfortunately, I think you’re seeing more and more restaurants close.”

  • To Moderate Republicans

    To Moderate Republicans

    by Dale R. Botten

    “We hold these truths…”. So begins a sentence of the Declaration of Independence. A “truth” can be defined as:
    (1) facts.
    (2) being the case.
    “to be self-evident…”.
    (1) requiring no further verification
    That Donald Trump is Vladimir Putin’s number one B-boy (NOT Bat-boy) is self-evident truth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urW-LzeTpS8 ).
    That Putin’s plan is to destroy NATO and re-animate the old Soviet Bloc, beginning with Ukraine is self evident truth
    (https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/russia-ukraine-world-war-three-vladimir-putin-b1136411.html ). That Trump’s plan to become America’s first dictator includes using the military is self-evident truth ( https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-military-fears-rcna129159 ).

    That there are Republican members of Congress and state houses who support and are eager to participate in the selling out of our democracy (and the democracies of Europe) that Americans shed their blood to help establish and protect is the most egregious, deplorable and heinous self-evident truth of all
    (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/donald-trump-republicans-vladimir-putin-puppets.html ). The reason why is a discussion for another day.

    These Republican puppets are beyond redemption. They have chosen to throw their lot in with Russia, via Donald Trump (the reasons for which we can only speculate and are for another discussion). Then there are those Republicans whose sense of loyalty and devotion to the Constitution compel them to stand up and fight back; precious few Republicans like Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney.

    However, there are others also; others whose sense of right and wrong and their duty to protect and defend the Constitution keep them awake at night…but they just can’t seem to bring themselves to stand tall against the orange menace that is hell-bent on destroying democracy not only in America, but across the globe. Why? Fear. Fear is a great motivator, but also a great inhibitor. They are deathly afraid of the orange menace, Donald Trump and his Russian puppeteer. They’re terrified of two things: ending up in the unemployment line, or ending up in the morgue…or both.

    If their primary concern is the former, then they can no longer claim that they are defending the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic; for it is under attack by both. Their status as patriot is strongly called into question.
    Hitler had his Brown Shirts and Mussolini had his Black Shirts. Trumpputin (as I have heard him called) has his MAGA Shirts. Violence is their stock and trade…all of them. There are those that practice it and those that condone it. The practitioners are those who dwell one step beyond the lunatic fringe that now controls the Republican Party.
    If these are who the moderate Republicans in Congress fear the most, that is understandable. As was said before, fear is both a great motivator and inhibitor. But remember, our Constitution, our Union and our very freedom are at stake here, every bit as much as they were during WW2 and even the Civil War. Being scared is natural; happens to everybody.

    You know who else was scared? That 19-year-old soldier whose footprint is forever enshrined into the bloody sand of beaches like Anzio, Utah, Omaha, Point du Hoc…and in countless towns, villages and fields thereafter. There were others, too: Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima…and more too numerous to mention. We can add to this this those who shed their blood here at home to save our Union and democracy (as imperfect as it is) at Shiloh, Gettysburg, Antietam…just for starters. Every one of those young men (and women) were scared as hell; but they knew their country’s very survival was in jeopardy and they knew what they had to do…and they did it. The sweat, the tears and the blood of each one of them have irrigated the fertile soil not only in America, but around the world, so that freedom and the dignity of all human life may have at least a chance to grow and thrive. These are the same young men and women Donald Trump has credibly called, “losers and suckers.”
    ( https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers and-suckers/615997/ ).

    What about you, Mr./Ms. Moderate Republican legislator? These men and women throughout our brief history have answered the call to preserve democracy at home and around the world, so that “government of the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE and for the PEOPLE shall not perish from the earth.” Are you willing to do the same?

    Douglas County Democratic Party

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    “If the meanest human in the republic is deprived of their rights then every human in the republic is deprived of their rights.”
    —Jane Addams, 1903

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  • Republican Study Committee Budget Proposal for FY2025

    Republican Study Committee Budget Proposal for FY2025

    Entitled “Fiscal Sanity,” this budget proves that their definition of “sanity” is insane.

    The Republican Study Committee has come out with its budget proposal for fiscal year 2025. The budget proposal boasts it will balance the budget within 7 years. While impressive looking at 180 pages, which you can read if you want to, we thought we’d take the time to quickly summarize the main points.

    No more pay raises for government workers.

    GovExec.com states the following:

    “The document argues that federal employees are overpaid compared to private sector workers to the tune of 17% when accounting for non-salary benefits. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, federal workers make 27.54% less on average than their private sector counterparts before considering non-salary benefits.

    The plan would do away with the annual process by which the president proposes and implements annual across-the-board raises to federal workers in favor of only providing “merit-based” increases, a move the conservatives say would save $57 billion over the next decade. And it calls for the government to reduce the paid leave available to federal employees “to match the value of benefits” provided in the private sector. That vague provision would reduce federal spending by $75 billion over the next decade, the lawmakers said.”

    The Budget would cut the Federal Employee’s Health Benefits Program.

    Gut Federal Employee Unions

    Of course, gut federal workers’ unions: “The conservatives’ budget endorses legislation aimed at reducing the federal firing process to 30 days and stripping federal workers of some of their adverse action appeal rights. And in a signal of their continued opposition to labor unions, it would ban the use of official time at federal agencies, rescind President Biden’s federal workforce executive orders and end federal workers’ ability to pay their union dues via payroll deduction.”

    Gut Inflation Reduction Act sending jobs back overseas

    The White House notes: “House Republicans’ plan would raise energy costs and send our new manufacturing jobs back overseas by gutting other crucial elements of the Inflation Reduction Act, raise housing costs, and allow big companies to rip off consumers with junk fees.

    –Cuts Medicare and Social Security while putting health care at risk for millions

    –Calls for over $1.5 trillion in cuts to Social Security, including an increase in the retirement age to 69 and cutting disability benefits.
    –Raises Medicare costs for seniors by taking away Medicare’s authority to negotiate prescription drug costs, repealing $35 insulin, and the $2,000 out-of-pocket cap in the Inflation Reduction Act
    –Transitions Medicare to a premium support system that CBO has found would raise premiums for many seniors.
    –Cuts Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program by $4.5 trillion over ten years, taking coverage away from millions of people, eroding care for seniors, children, and people with disabilities, and taking us back to the days where people could be denied care for pre-existing conditions and charged more for health insurance simply for being a woman.
    –Rigs the economy for the wealthy and large corporations against middle class families

    –Passes $5.5 trillion in tax cuts skewed to the wealthy and large corporations, including permanently extending tax cuts in the Trump tax law, repealing the minimum tax on billion-dollar corporations the President signed into law, eliminating the estate tax for the wealthiest Americans, providing a massive tax cut for billionaire investors, and making it easier for the wealthy and large corporations to get away with cheating on their taxes.
    –Kills jobs and investment in communities throughout the country – including Red States – by eliminating the clean energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act.
    –Makes it easier for companies and banks to rip consumers off with unfair and hidden junk fees by eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
    –Raises housing costs by cutting funding for rental assistance, cutting funding for programs that help build housing, and raising mortgage costs for first-time homebuyers.