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The Coming Health Care Disaster | Drs. Farhan Bhatti & Christopher Ford Speak Out
Our health care system is in crisis with Medicaid cuts, ACA subsidies expiring, rural hospitals closing, scientific research cuts, and rampant information from HHS Secretary RFK Jr.
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Millions risk losing coverage as federal ACA subsidies expire, pushing families toward unaffordable premiums and ER-only care.
Rural hospitals face collapse, threatening access and livelihoods while states like Michigan scramble to backfill lost federal funding.
Trump’s HHS, led by RFK Jr., is dismantling evidence-based medicine, turning public health into partisan ideology.
Doctors urge patients to trust science and local clinicians over misinformation—and to remember that elections decide who lives with care.
Dr. Chris Ford, an emergency physician from Wisconsin, called the situation “the difference between life and death.” For 24 million Americans who rely on the Affordable Care Act’s tax credits, the GOP’s refusal to renew them will mean skyrocketing premiums and lost coverage. Ford described a future already arriving in his ER — patients choosing between rent and medication, parents delaying care until it’s too late, and rural residents driving hours for basic treatment. “These effects will hit the people who can least afford them,” he warned.
In Michigan, Dr. Farhan Bhatti sees that fear daily. In addition to being state lead for the Committee to Protect Health Care, his clinic also serves the working poor —families doing everything right yet priced out of the system. While Michigan Democrats safeguarded Medicaid funding in their state budget, Bhatti noted that most states won’t or can’t follow suit. His message was blunt: Empathy and evidence must return to leadership, or “we just keep going backwards.”
The conversation took an even darker turn with Trump’s appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head Health and Human Services. Bhatti described a “hyperpartisan” assault on science, from gutting vaccine oversight to dismantling the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that sets national screening standards. Ford added that physicians now find themselves countering misinformation from the very institutions meant to protect public health. “We have to speak louder than those using disinformation at the highest levels,” he said.
Both doctors ended on the same truth: Medicine can’t survive without trust. Bhatti put it plainly — facts still matter, and patients can still rely on their doctors, regardless of politics. “When I say a treatment is safe, they listen — even if President Trump says otherwise.” For these physicians, the path forward isn’t just advocacy; it’s restoring the human connection that keeps democracy, and medicine, alive.
Tune in to this urgent conversation between Executive Editor Susan J. Demas and Dr. Chris Ford and Dr. Farhan Bhatti on the deteriorating state of American healthcare.
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