Senator Tammy Baldwin

Yeah, well, as we speak, people are getting those notices in the mail or online about what their premiums are going to be next year.

And then when you take away this premium tax credit that's going to expire, there are so many millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites who will

lose health care because they simply cannot afford it.

And I've been hearing from my constituents, meeting with them, lifting their stories.

Just earlier today, I talked with Kara, who runs a small business.

It's a nonprofit child care center.

And she and her family, as well as her employees, rely on the Affordable Care Act.

but she feels as though she's not going to be able to pay for her own health insurance in the future if the tax credits expire.

She's also worried about her workers leaving if she can't provide some help with health care benefits.

And these are small businesses, these are farmers, these are the backbones of our communities.

And they are disproportionately, by the way, in states and congressional districts that voted for Donald Trump.

I think we started to see a little bit of kinks in the armor, if you will, with some of Trump's statements and some of Speaker Johnson's statements.

And they are beginning to understand just how critical this healthcare issue is.

They created this crisis in their big, ugly bill.

And now with the expiring tax credits, it would only get so much worse.

Exactly, and that's the big fear.

Nobody is saying that our healthcare system was healthy to begin with.

There are lots of problems that we have to resolve, lots of problems.

But the big ugly bill with almost a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid,

is going to cripple our healthcare system.

And if we allow, and we just can't allow these premium tax credits to expire at the end of the year, but it would just make it even worse.

You would get it so dysfunctional that it's hard to put it back together again.

There are so many important reforms that we ought to be addressing, but fixing the

chaos and damage that has put our healthcare system in crisis just in the first months of President Trump's second presidency.

We've got to fix those things first.

Well, first of all, just still anger at the big, ugly bill.

Remember, fundamentally, that was a tax measure, right?

They made these cuts to programs that working people rely on in order to pay for nearly four and a half trillion dollars in tax cuts, disproportionately helping billionaires like Trump and billionaires.

profitable corporations.

And yes, in this tax bill, they couldn't even see fit to extend a tax provision that makes people's health care more affordable, not a tax cut for working people, just tax cuts for the disproportionately benefit billionaires.

And so it is so out of touch.

You know, what's so ironic is that Trump

diagnosed the problem during his election.

He ran on bringing costs down for everyone.

And then he gets into office and he has turned around and done everything he possibly could to increase costs for Americans.

It is appalling and he needs to be held accountable.

But first, we need to make sure

that these Affordable Care Act premium tax credits are continued into the future so that we don't see millions of people lose their health insurance.

And you were right when you were diagnosing the additional problems in the healthcare system.

Once you have a whole bunch of people uninsured,

You typically, if you don't have health insurance, you don't seek preventative care, you don't seek annual physicals, you don't seek care at all until it's so bad you go to the most expensive settings possible, urgent care centers, emergency rooms, and that drives up health care costs for everyone.

Well, there's a critical sort of issue.

bringing together of issues.

Our farmers are facing incredible headwinds.

And we are a dairy state.

You may have heard of Wisconsin as America's dairy land.

So a lot of our farmers are in dairy.

And that is a lot of labor.

So there's issues with regard to visas for their workforce.

There are issues with regard to the tariffs that are

wreaking havoc on a lot of their inputs and supplies.

In Wisconsin, a northern state, we have a lot of back and forth with Canada.

A lot of the fertilizer inputs come from Canada.

Those have shot up because of tariffs.

We have other supplies across the border.

And then about a quarter of all farmers use the Affordable Care Act for their health care coverage.

And so this president is just contributing to the headwinds that our farmers are facing.

And he knows things are bad.

He's talking about bailouts.

But our farmers don't want bailouts.

They want a level playing field and a fair shot at getting ahead.

Well, absolutely.

I think there's a lot of concerns about the lack of accountability of this administration and the lawlessness that we are seeing.

And people want that reined in.

They are very concerned about the direction of the country and the direction that Donald Trump is taking us.

And that lawless, sometimes unconstitutional behavior

is a deep concern to so many that I represent and hear from in the state of Wisconsin.

Thanks for having me.

Decisions like this must be made in consultation with CDC experts.

because otherwise we are left wondering who is advising the Secretary of Health, or if his own conspiracy theories are enough to dictate who can get a vaccine.

Dr. Auri, did you ever brief Secretary Kennedy

Did your center directors ever directly brief Secretary Kennedy?

They did not.

You were the chief medical officer at the CDC.

Would you say that it's harmful to the public if the secretary is not informed by experts like yourself?

Very much so.

How would you characterize Secretary Kennedy's approach to working with scientific experts at the CDC?