AMERICAN DISCOURSE: It could be as many as twenty million?

THURSDAY, JULY 10, 2025

"Not true," Perino said: When it comes to the American discourse, denizens of the two Americas are living in two different worlds. 

In part, that's due to the so-called "democratization of media"—to the invention and spread of talk radio, of cable news and Internet publishing in its various forms, moving from individual web sites on to the current podcasts.

The growth of these "new media" has created a world marked by an unfortunate bromide:

Every flyweight a king!

Every D-list comedian; every conventionally attractive person who doesn't know what he or she is stalking about; every corporate hireling working for very large pay from a partisan corporate employer:

Each of these players can now be master of his or her own domain! Some will offer intelligent discourse—but now and then, others will not.

Along with this democratization, we rapidly moved toward the practice known as "segregation by viewpoint." This returns us to what viewers in Red America heard last Wednesday afternoon on the "cable news" program, The Five.

Sad! As we noted yesterday, one of the players on this Fox News Channel didn't seem to know which program the talkers were talking about. That said, he did seem sure that a large amount of fraud must be present within that government program, whatever it actually was.

For the record, the talkers were talking about changes to the Medicaid program—changes which would or might result from the GOP megabill. Once again, it's important to show you what people in Red America were now being told about this important legislation:

GUTFELD (7/2/25): [The Democrats] are the human version of hysterical tweets...They say, "Oh my God, you're cutting Medicaid! You're throwing, you're throwing the poor and needy"—

No, no, no! These are young, able-bodied people, and illegals. You know, this isn't a free buffet for people who could afford to pay for it. So enough with that.

[...]

PERINO: So on the health car front, Joey—every time a Democrat goes on TV, they add two to three million more to how many people are going to lose their health care. It's 7.8 million people that would be required to do these work requirements, and it's illegal immigrants. 

Those hysterical Democrats! According to this program's Nine Million Dollar Man, they were saying that people who were poor and needy might lose their Medicaid coverage because of the megabill!

That was absurd, this furious fellow said. Dana Perino joined him in nailing down the mandated messaging points:

No one would lose their Medicaid coverage except able-bodied slackers! Those slackers would lose their Medicaid coverage, but so would "illegals"—illegal immigrants.

That's what Red American viewers were told during last Wednesday's session. As we noted yesterday, Emily Compagno eventually jumped in, suggesting that there were two million such "illegals" receiving Medicaid coverage in California alone.

Are illegal / undocumented / unauthorized immigrants able to receive Medicaid coverage at all? After earlier frustrating Google searches, we still weren't entirely sure of the answer to that question.

That said, Red America was once again being reassured about the larger question. No one was going to lose Medicaid coverage except a bunch of slackers, plus a bunch of illegal immigrants.

That's what Red America was told. Over here in Blue America, we Blues keep hearing something quite different! For example, a front-page report in this morning's New York times is now saying this:

Why 1.5 Million New Yorkers Could Lose Health Insurance Under Trump Bill

President Trump’s domestic policy law, which extends federal tax cuts and slashes the social safety net, is expected to have a seismic effect on health insurance and health care in New York, with more than one million people in the state losing benefits, experts say.

In one key respect, the law’s impact will be felt more keenly in New York than in any other state—and it has nothing to do with Medicaid.

[...]

In a memo to hospital executives, Kenneth Raske, the president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, described the bill as “the most destructive health care cuts in American history.”

“There is no candy-coating the bill’s impact on New York,” Mr. Raske wrote.

Changes in Medicaid, such as new work requirements, will lead to more than one million people in New York losing health insurance during the next decade, according to estimates by the New York State Department of Health. 

As always, complexification is hard. But according to the estimate cited in this report, "more than one million people in New York [State]" will "lose [their] health insurance during the next decade" due to "changes in Medicaid" alone.

According to that estimate, a second wrinkle in the bill means that even more people in the state will be losing their health insurance. But in the Empire State alone, more than a million people will be losing their Medicaid coverage—or at least, so we Blues are now told.

(Are those more than a million people able-bodied slackers and a bunch of "illegals?" This news report in the New York Times doesn't address any such question.)

According to Gutfeld and Perino, no one will lose Medicaid coverage except for a bunch of slackers and an additional bunch of illegals. (For the record, Perino said that 7.8 million recipients would be exposed to work requirements. She didn't say that any such number would actually lose their coverage.)

This messaging was reassuring to their clients in Red America. But all along the road to passage, those of us in Blue America had been exposed to assessments which were vastly different. 

At one point in last Wednesday's program, Perino mocked the way those hysterical Democrats had been bumping their numbers up. At this point, we take a moment to explore the nature of Perino's casting on this particular program: 

Perino has long been assigned a specialized role on The Five.  She's long been expected to convey the impression that, unlike Gutfeld and Watters and Judge Jeanine, at least one of the program's four pro-MAGA co-hosts wasn't completely insane.  

Last Wednesday, she was mocking the hysterical Democrats with a bit of gay abandon. Here's a fuller record of what she said as she threw to the clueless but supportive Johnny Joey Jones:

PERINO: Every time a Democrat goes on TV, they add two to three million more to how many people are going to lose their health care. It's 7.8 million people that would be required to do these work requirements, and it's illegal immigrants. It's 7.8.

Yesterday, it was up to 20 million, even though that's not true. It's like a game of telephone down there.

Jones quickly began describing the rampant Social Security fraud among the people in Dalton, Georgia—among the people he loves. As he continued, he seemed to think that the talkers were discussing changes to the Medicare program.

In that belief he was mistaken—but as the old saying goes, it was close enough for "cable news" work! As for Perino, she seemed to be reading from her talking-point sheets as she mocked the way the Democrats kept pushing the numbers up—and as she said the latest number simply isn't true.

By now, it wasn't clear what that latest number even referred to. But this slightly jumbled report in USA Today had at least explained where that new number had come from:

Senate vote: 20 million people could lose Medicaid benefits

[...]

Nationwide, between 12 million and 20 million people could lose Medicaid coverage under deep cuts to the health insurance program proposed by Senate Republicans, according to two estimates.

The first, by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, calculates that the Senate version of the reconciliation bill would leave 11.8 million people uninsured by 2034. The second, by the Senate Joint Economic Committee Minority, estimates that about 20 million people could lose the coverage under the amended Senate bill.

[...]

The Senate included an amendment that would not only slash Medicaid writ large—as House Republicans wanted—but would also reduce the federal share of Medicaid spending for people enrolled through state-level expansions of the Affordable Care Act. The expansions made more people eligible for subsidized insurance.

It sounded like the number may have jumped to 20 million because of the changes in the Senate bill. Perino contented herself with telling Fox viewers that the laughable new number simply wasn't true.

So it went—so it has gone—as people in Red and Blue America increasingly live in two different worlds. About this and about almost everything else, Blue Americans hear one thing. Red Americans hear something quite different.

Meanwhile, how is an American citizen supposed to know what's actually (most likely) true? Alas! In large part due to the complexification of everything, it can be extremely hard to complete a satisfactory search for the truth.

Tomorrow, we'll return to what Compagno said at the end of last week's pseudo-discussion. After that, we'll take you through the search we ourselves conducted about California's "illegals."

Every stumblebum a king! Simply put, it's the way our clownlike American discourse is constructed now!

Tomorrow: What is truth?