Podcast
Episode 4: Dean Baker talks with healthcare journalist Jonathan Cohn about the historic assault on Medicaid at the heart of the 2025 budget bill. The proposed legislation would slash hundreds of billions in federal funding for essential healthcare programs. They discuss how “work requirements” create bureaucratic traps rather than jobs, while revealing the cynical strategy to delay the harshest cuts until 2029. The Affordable Care Act has transformed healthcare access, giving workers newfound freedom and security. Now, the ACA is also on the chopping block.
About Jonathan Cohn
Jonathan Cohn is a senior national correspondent at The Bulwark.
He covers politics and policy, with a particular focus on social welfare and health care. A former writer and editor at HuffPost, the New Republic and American Prospect, he has also written for the New York Times, Atlantic, and Self, among others.
Jonathan is a two-time winner of the Sidney Hillman Prize for journalism and was called “one of the nation’s leading experts on health policy” by the Washington Post. He appears frequently on television, radio, and various streaming platforms, and once got to tell Stephen Colbert that his show’s company health plan included a form of “death panels.”
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