Raw America managing editor Carl Gibson recently interviewed Dr. Chris Ford — an emergency room physician practicing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and contributor to the Paging America Substack — to talk about about the ongoing affordability crisis in American healthcare. They covered:
The Trump administration’s cuts to Medicare Part D subsidies
The threat that Medicaid cuts in Republicans’ so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” pose to rural hospitals across the country
The toll the COVID-19 pandemic took on frontline healthcare workers while Republicans point fingers at Dr. Fauci
Whether Medicare for All or similar universal healthcare models could solve the healthcare affordability crisis
The administrative burden private insurance places on both doctors and patients
How “brain drain” is causing a significant shortage of doctors and nurses, and
Whether the profit motive belongs in the healthcare sector, and more
Conversations like this one — with a practicing emergency room physician speaking candidly about problems with the American healthcare system — require resources. Raw America will never accept a dime from a billionaire backer or allow corporate advertisers to dictate our coverage. But that also means we need support from our readers to keep this work going. If you’re reading this on a free subscription, please consider making today the day you upgrade to a paying membership. Interviews like these couldn’t happen without our readers stepping up. Subscribe today.
How Trump’s Cuts to Medicare and the Affordable Care Act Are Driving Up Costs
Gibson opened by noting that President Donald Trump’s administration is ending federal subsidies to Medicare Part D, which is a double whammy for working-class Americans after Republicans allowed the enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits to expire last year. ACA premiums are up anywhere from 58 to 114 percent, according to Kaiser Family Foundation data. Ford said the burden often falls squarely on emergency rooms like his.
“We in emergency medicine are the safety net for the country,” Ford said, pointing out that patients tend to delay care as long as they possibly can, until they reach a breaking point.
“When you can’t breathe, or when you know you have that stroke that could have been preventable, and you got to go to the emergency department,” Ford said, noting that by then, the damage is often much worse than had they been able to get non-emergency care.
Doctors ‘Scared as Hell’ About Rural Hospital Closures
Gibson then pivoted to Republicans’ so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which Trump signed into law last year. The law includes more than $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, which provides health insurance to low-income and disabled Americans. But as Gibson noted, most of the more severe cuts won’t take effect until after the midterms. Ford said many of his across Wisconsin fear their hospitals are at risk of closing.
“You know, people are scared as hell,” Ford said, citing a University of North Carolina study tracking hospitals nationwide at risk of closure. He named three critical access hospitals in Wisconsin under threat — in Manitowoc, Stanley, and Osseo — and warned that losing them could mean potentially deadly delays for patients experiencing serious health episodes like heart attacks, strokes or complications with childbirth.
“That can be the difference between life and death,” Ford said of the extra time it would take for rural patients to reach the nearest hospital, particularly in states like Wisconsin with harsh winters.
Gibson noted that rural hospitals like St. Claire Regional Medical Center in Morehead, Kentucky (where he went to college) often also function as major economic engines for their communities, and that those hospitals closing could also be an economic disaster.
Ford agreed, and added that the risk of rural hospital closures only adds to the ongoing staffing crisis plaguing hospitals nationwide. He described how Wisconsin’s post-Dobbs abortion law drove obstetricians and gynecologists out of the state entirely, as they feared being prosecuted for simply doing what they were trained to do.
“The safety net is fraying,” Ford said. “There’s only so much that we can do.”
‘Witch Hunt Ran By a Clown Show’: Dr. Ford’s Choice Words for Republicans Attacking Dr. Fauci
Gibson also noted that on Thursday, Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted to Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt after his repeated assertions of his Fifth Amendment rights during a recent hearing. He then asked Ford to compare Republicans’ political theater to his own harrowing experience treating Covid-19 patients on the front lines in 2020.
Ford described how he had to intubate a patient just two hours before his own son was born during the first Covid-19 shutdowns, and how he had to wear an N95 mask around his newborn for the child’s first six months because so little was known about the virus.
“Science is not about being right,” Ford said. “It’s about learning more. It’s about working with the evidence in front of you.”
The ER physician called the congressional hearing “a witch hunt ran by a clown show,” arguing their behavior was disrespectful of both Fauci’s decades of experience and of the sacrifices made by healthcare workers who, unlike Fauci’s critics, couldn’t stay home during the pandemic.
Is Medicare for All a Solution to the Affordability Crisis?
After Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s recent victory in Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary win, Gibson asked Ford whether El-Sayed’s promise to fight for Medicare for All (which he described in his April interview with Raw America) could realistically solve the affordability crisis, and what solutions Dr. Ford would like to see implemented as a physician.
Ford praised Medicare for All and said he appreciated El-Sayed’s advocacy for the policy, but also said its chances of becoming a reality in the near future were slim.
“It’s going to be hard as hell to get through just a single payer system in the way that our healthcare system is organized now,” Dr. Ford said.
He pointed instead to ideas with more bipartisan support, like “Medicare by Choice,” which would expand Medicare eligibility with new subsidies. He noted this was similar to successful universal healthcare models currently used in Germany and France. Ford also stressed the need for additional mental health coverage, describing how patients have been repeatedly turned away from care while in crisis simply because they lacked health insurance.
How Much Time Does it Cost Doctors to Fight With Insurers?
Gibson acknowledged that because Dr. Ford works in the emergency room, he personally doesn’t have the burden of having to contend with insurance providers. But he asked the ER physician whether his colleagues lament about the burden of navigating the confusing bureaucracy of private health insurance networks, and whether that ordeal tends to push more doctors toward supporting solutions like single-payer healthcare.
Ford confirmed that was a very real concern among his colleagues, and said insurance fights are almost always the top reason for physician burnout.
“I can diagnose you. I can tell you what you need to do,” Dr. Ford said. “But then you add in the added hurdle of now, okay, we have to find a way for you to afford it.”
The Milwaukee physician observed that even in emergency medicine, where pre-approvals aren’t required for treatment, the fallout from insurance denials often lands in his ER, given that patients who have no other options usually show up once conditions become emergencies.
The Threat of ‘Brain Drain’ in Healthcare
Since Trump returned to power in 2025, his administration has consistently made cuts to critical programs like the National Institutes of Health and zeroed out grants for important medical research, leading to scientists, physicians and others to leave the United States for countries more accepting of science. Gibson asked whether Ford was concerned about lasting damage from the administration’s cuts to programs aimed at training the next generation of doctors.
Ford pointed to his own experience suing the state of Wisconsin over its post-Dobbs abortion law alonngside his colleague Dr. Kristin Lyerly (also of the Paging America Substack). He said that following that law’s passage, residency applications to Wisconsin OB-GYN programs experienced a significant drop while rural maternity wards shuttered across the state. He also urged his fellow physicians to speak out against misinformation, calling it as an ethical obligation.
“If you’re standing on the sidelines and not saying anything, are you [com]plicit in this?” Ford said. “Everybody here needs to do their part.”
Does the Profit Motive Belong in Healthcare?
To close the interview, Gibson referenced the book “An American Sickness” by Dr. Elizabeth Rosenthal, in which the author — a New York Times journalist and physician — diagnosed the problems with the American healthcare and prescribed multiple solutions. Gibson noted that Rosenthal’s book was rife with examples of how the pursuit of profit consistently interfered with the actual process of providing care, and then asked Dr. Ford whether it’s appropriate for private companies to treat healthcare as a profit center.
Ford quoted his mentor, who gave him a crucial piece of advice before he died of Covid-19 during the pandemic’s first wave: if you want to get rich, don’t go into medicine.
“I went into medicine to help people,” Dr. Ford said, reminding viewers that physicians’ salaries usually make up a single-digit percentage point of total healthcare spending. He contrasted that with private equity-backed insurers prioritizing profit over outcomes, and raking in billions as a result.
“They don’t really give a shit how the healthcare outcomes are,” Ford said of companies like UnitedHealthcare, arguing that healthcare reform should focus on redirecting money toward patient care and away from administrative profit.
Keep Independent Journalism Alive
Raw America is completely reader-supported, editorially independent and not for sale. We have no billionaire backer or corporate advertisers. We have you. And interviews like this — with a practicing physician offering his expert perspective on the American healthcare system — are only possible because readers decide independent journalism is worth funding. If you’ve been reading Raw America on a free subscription, today is the day to upgrade to a paying one. Support Raw America and help us make more conversations like this one possible.
