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Posts published in “TV/Radio”

The Hospital Tax is Going Away – Where Else to Find Money to Fund Medicaid? — On with Lee Elci, News Now, 94.9FM – Sept.17

Lee Elci: Red Jahncke is joining us. Red. Good morning. How are you, sir?

Red Jahncke: I'm good, Lee.

Lee Elci: So, you want to talk about federalism today?

Red Jahncke: Yeah. We had Roe [vs Wade]. Sent authority on abortion to the states. It's now a state decision, not a federal decision. We live in a federal republic. Some things are handled nationally. Some things are handled state by state. That's the American model. Many people are upset. They think the abortion decision was wrong. It wasn't really a decision. It was a shift of who was making the decision.

Same thing is what we ought to take a look at financially.

You come to what we've talked about a great deal, which is the hospital tax. So, it has been exploited and abused horrendously by the states where they have been syphoning money out of Uncle Sam's coffers using this tax.

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Charlie Kirk’s Legacy and Lesson: Open Debate – On With Lee Elci, News Now, 94.9FM – Sept 13

Lee Elci: Good morning, Red. How are you?

Red Jahncke: I am good. A little bit saddened by the state we are in. A little bit angry at the state we are in as a nation.

Lee Elci: So, we've been talking about this. You believe there's a critical difference between the violence or the rhetoric on the left and the violence and the rhetoric on the right.

Red Jahncke: Yeah. There is. Let's focus on exactly what Charlie Kirk was doing when he was shot. He was opening a three-hour open debate under his campaign slogan of Prove Me Wrong. He was inviting the left to engage in open debate.

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Government Bailouts Vs. Picking Winners and Losers – On with Lee Elci, News Now, 94.9FM – Aug 27th

Lee Elci: I have a serious concern sometimes when the federal government gets involved in purchasing pieces of of a company. And I guess we bought 10% of Intel. What's the significance of that?

Red Jahncke: Let's compare it to Chrysler back in the day. Chrysler was going bankrupt. The government rescued Chrysler. Otherwise, one third of the US auto industry would have been out of business. That's an outright rescue.

Now, look at Intel. It's a 10% position. 10% is not a bailout. 10% is an investment. The general question is whether the government should be in the business of picking winners and losers. Is Intel going to be a winner or a loser? You start an evaluation. The general principle is: should the government be doing that at all?

Lee Elci: Well, my position would be probably not. I mean, look back during Obama, we give $500 billion to Solyndra? That money was wasted.

Red Jahncke: Well, let's take two examples. One Solyndra and, two, Boeing. Starting with Boeing, there's no way the government is, or should, allow Boeing to go bankrupt. There are only two jet makers in the world, Airbus and Boeing. To surrender that position would be ludicrous. So yes, we're going to bail out Boeing for economic reasons.

And then Boeing is a strategic asset. It produces a tremendous amount of, of hardware for the military and for the space program. No way we're going to let Boeing go, nor should we let it go.

Then you look at Solyndra, a startup that was not a real preexisting company. That was a ridiculous.

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CT State Employees Want More Money NOW, Before The State Loses Hundreds of Millions of Hospital Tax Revenue — On With Lee Elci, News Now, 94.9FM | July 30

Lee Elci: So you got a piece up right now. Will unions grab money from Medicaid beneficiaries? Tell me about this one.

Red Jahncke: Well, it’s the juxtaposition of the elements of state employee compensation against the shift of Medicaid financial responsibility back from Uncle Sam to the states… to the original concept to the program. The program is health care for the poor, and it was launched as a 50-50 partnership between Uncle Sam and the States, with each paying half the freight.

Lee Elci: All right, you're talking about the unions now grabbing the money on the floor for the special session coming up?

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Tariffs, Gaza, Ukraine, Medicaid-State Wages Tradeoff – On With Lee Elci, News Now, 94.9FM – July 23

Red Jahncke: Let's key off of what you just said. A lot is going on in the world, and we've been talking about a lot. What we do have coming up next, I suppose, is August 1st, which is tariff day.

Lee Elci: Tariff day.

Red Jahncke: Not too long from now, a week.

Lee Elci: Right. And so what happens specifically and what changes on tariff day? Tell everybody what the difference is on tariff day. What are we looking at?

Red Jahncke: Well, the difference is, in April, President Trump declared Liberation Day. And then pulled the punch and rescheduled it for August 1st. So, this is when all the reciprocal tariffs come into effect. Right. We’ll see what happens actually.

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CT State Pensions Higher than Last Salary; Hospital Tax Cut. Costs Up, Revenue Down. It’s Unsustainable! — On With Gary Byron, Talk of CT, WDRC, July 15th

Gary Byron: Of the, first 49 states levying the health care provider tax, otherwise known as the hospital tax, Connecticut always charged the highest rate. I'm not sure why. But this year, Governor Lamont proposed to kind of blast through the maximum rate. Again, this is despite that the House version of the reconciliation bill [enacted July 4th] bans any increase. The Senate version kind of scaled back the tax altogether. Lamont would seem to be taking the state into extremely shaky territory with it. A budget dependent on $375 million increase in taxing. It's actually it's actually taking the tax to a whopping $1.2 billion.

Red Jahncke: Yeah. This is a scam that's been going on, nationwide, over the last decade in real force. Of course, Connecticut has indulged more than any other state. I remember two things from early in the Malloy administration. One was when the good governor introduced the hospital tax in 2011, and there were questions all around. You're smiling. I can see you already. You were there.

Gary Byron: Oh, no, I wasn't there 2011. I was there in 2015. But I remember this hospital tax bill in the Malloy administration.

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Medicaid Reforms in the Big Beautiful Bill and Tariff Revenue Over a Decade – On With Lee Elci, News Now, 94.9FM – July 9th

Lee Elci: I'm doing okay. I'm doing okay. So, you know, I don't know. Where do you want to go today? I want to go big. We haven't really talked about what we're doing today. What do you want to do today?

Red Jahncke: Well, we've kind of covered the ground. Fortunately, the ground we've been covering prospective developments are now in place as actual accomplishments. The Big Beautiful Bill is now law. We've talked about the key provision in there, that I've been banging the drum about since 2017, that's the hospital tax. It's now being reformed. It's not an idea, proposal or anything like that. It's now law.

The US House originated the bill and put a moratorium on hospital taxes. That means no states can increase their tax rate. And there's one state that does not tax its hospitals, Alaska. And under the moratorium, Alaska can't start. They're called formally provider taxes. If you're a state that is not yet taxing nursing homes, under the moratorium, you can't start now.

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The Big Beautiful Bill, Medicaid Reform and $3 Trillion of Tariff Revenue – Talking With Lee Elci, News Now, 94.9FM, July 2

Lee Elci: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. The one, the big red button. Alright. Listen. Good morning. Great column, by the way, one that we have talked about at length in the past. But if folks haven't read Red's column, go to the Wall Street Journal or go to the-red-line.com and take a look at it there. It's fantastic. But today you wanted to talk about the Big Beautiful Bill.

Red Jahncke: Yes, sir.

Lee Elci: Alright. Yeah. Talk to me. Give me the 30,000 foot view and then I'll ask questions.

Red Jahncke: I did, and that's exactly where I think we should start. Because, right from 30,000ft, the Democrats are distorting and misinforming. By the time you get to anything that's actually in the bill, you're beyond this point of major distortion.

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The Medicaid Slush Fund; CT Pensions Higher Than Salaries – On With Gary Byron, Talk of CT, WDRC

Gary Byron: So, Senator Ron Johnson and some others gave the, the One Big Beautiful Bill kind of a cold reception when it arrived in the Senate. A warning that the Bill will balloon deficits and debt, which, by the way, are already ginormous. Jamie Diamond, JPMorgan Chase CEO predicted that a crisis -- not if, but as soon as six months from now, will occur.

So, look, there's no greater contributor to the recent rapid growth in deficits and debt than Medicaid, particularly under the Democrats, and thus no more appropriate GOP target financially and politically.

But let's be honest with each other Red. When we look at, when we look at Medicaid and the cuts that it's taking, it's it's not really for people who are justifiably and legitimately are on Medicaid. It's cutting waste, fraud, fraud and abuse. It's cutting back on illegal immigrants who have been on Medicaid for quite some time. It's cutting back on fraud. That sometimes doctors are guilty of. And, it's it's cutting back on people who claim to be disabled who really are not; they're actually able bodied individuals. And it's also requiring for those who need some Medicare (speaker meant Medicaid) and can work it, keeping them honest and putting them to work, I think they can work up to a certain amount of hours. Well, I didn't think this was a political issue. I thought this was common sense. I thought both parties were in agreement on eliminating waste, fraud and abuse. What's the story here Red?

Red Jahncke: Well, first of all, let's frame the issue in terms of the aggregates. Medicaid is exploding. It went from $600 billion in 2017 to $870 billion in 2023. That's almost a 50% increase in just six years. That kind of defines the term “unsustainable.” You ran through some of the issues involved.  Two of them stand out in terms of what the One Big Beautiful Bill has in it: single, able bodied, childless adults will no longer be eligible, unless they work, because under Joe Biden, they were able to enroll without any work requirement; that clocks in, I think, at a pretty substantial savings number. The various other things you mentioned, you hope are done on a regular basis year in, year out. That's be on the lookout for waste, fraud and abuse.

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CT Pays Pensions Higher Than Salaries; Using Medicaid as a Slush Fund – On With Lee Elci on News Now, 94.9FM, June 11th

Lee Elci: We talked last week. Your latest column that came out, I think, is a bombshell, if you will. Pension spiking in Connecticut with state employees retiring on pensions 38% higher than their salaries. How did this practice become so entrenched?

Red Jahncke: It's been a practice [since] the 1980s, but most states have begun to rein it in. It's been the most dramatically abused in the blue states with heavy public sector unionization. California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, all the usual suspects. But, what's going on in our state is jaw dropping, even to people who know this game. The idea that people are retiring with beginning pensions far in excess of their last salary is just an eye popping and astounding condition.

Lee Elci: Why do you think Connecticut, this little state, is the second most unionized state?

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