Joe Scarborough Blows Up on Mike Lawler in Fierce Medicaid Cuts Throwdown

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough lost it on Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) in a furious throwdown over Medicaid cuts he voted through when backing President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) after the congressman dismissed doctors’ fears that healthcare services would be impacted.

Lawler appeared on MSNBC Friday to tout his plans to introduce legislation that would “outright ban gerrymandering,” only for Scarborough to challenge him on his voting record, particularly his decision to push Trump’s sweeping domestic legislation that aimed to extend 2017 tax cuts, slash $1.5 trillion in federal spending, and to Medicaid.

Lawler defended the cuts and changes to Medicaid as “common sense” reform before asserting that Scarborough pushed for similar reforms when he was a GOP congressman himself in the 1990s.

The host then lit into the Republican with testimony of hospitals in his district that are sounding the alarm on impending staff layoffs and having to shutter key healthcare service provisions.

“That’s what they’re saying,” Scarborough concluded. “It’s not some left-wing focus or some –”

Lawler stuttered as he interrupted.

“Well, I’m just telling you what they’ve said,” Scarborough said.

The congressman continued to accuse the hospitals of pushing partisan talking points: “What they’re parroting is the same talking points being put out by the state. And by the –”

As Lawler kept talking, the host pushed back, raising his voice: “So you know their business better than they know their business?”

Noting that the Republican was still trying to speak over him, Scarborough raged on: “Congressman, you can keep talking if you want to, but are you saying that you know their business, you know, doctors’ business, you know, hospital administrators’ business better than they know their own business? Is that what you’re telling us here?”

“No, Joe,” Lawler replied. “If you’d stop putting words in my mouth and let me answer the question…”

As he tried to reply, Scarborough jumped in again: “You said they were parroting… You said that actually, they are having the words put into their mouth.”

Lawler kept cutting in before the host shouted: “You said they were parroting other people’s words!”

The House Republican argued that the financial challenges facing hospitals like Montefiore Nyack and Westchester Medical Center were the result of long-standing mismanagement of New York’s Medicaid system by the state, not the OBBBA. He claimed the state has repeatedly underfunded safety-net hospitals and instead pushed hospitals to seek support from larger parent systems.

Returning to his previous point, Scarborough responded: “You’re saying then, again – and I’m not putting words in your mouth – you say they’re just parroting other people’s words, they don’t really know what they’re talking about when they’re talking about how your vote hurt their hospitals, that it’s actually [New York Governor] Kathy Hochul’s fault.”

“Is that the bottom line? Before we get on to redistricting?” the host asked.

As Lawler repeated his argument, Scarborough turned to Morning Joe regular Claire McCaskill, who quizzed the congressman on cases where “human beings” in his district would lose healthcare access because of the vote.

“So again, one, you’re making a lot of hypotheticals,” Lawler began.

“No! No! No!” McCaskill shouted back, cutting in as the pair jabbed back and forth.

Playing referee, Scarborough called out to producers: “Come to me right now! Come to me right now! Come to me right now! We don’t do this.”

Addressing the guests, he said: “Claire’s going to ask a question, Mike. You’ll have time to respond to the question, all right? But none of the cross-talk. Claire, ask your question and then, Congressman, respond. Claire, go!”

McCaskill started again, calmer, arguing that “painful cuts” would be felt when hospitals with tight budget margins “have to absorb the costs for uninsured people” who “show up with dire trauma.”

“Who absorbs the costs?” she asked.

Lawler responded to argue that McCaskill’s concerns over Medicaid funding were part of a deeper, longstanding issue in the healthcare system, blaming New York State mismanagement and the failed promises of the Affordable Care Act.

He said hospital consolidation and rising costs have worsened over the past decade, and that “this has been a big problem that has been festering long before” current legislation.

Scarborough concluded the grilling by defending uninsured Americans: “There is no free lunch in health care. I will just say this point, the further and further we get away from Obamacare, it seems the biggest problem with Obamacare is that it didn’t go far enough.”

“You look at insurance, private insurance, and the profits that are being raked in by private health insurance companies and the coverage denial that continues,” he continued.

He added: “Yeah, we have a health care crisis for a lot of reasons, but not because the poor are getting a free ride. We have health care problems, in large part, because we have a lot of multinational corporations, a lot of insurance companies, that are making billions and billions of dollars denying health care coverage to those who need it most.”

Watch above via MSNBC.