Healthcare
Rand Paul fighting to ensure dangerous virus research doesn’t receive U.S. funding

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is fighting SB 1260 which calls for an increase in scientific research funding, by introducing an amendment to ensure gain of function research is banned from receiving any government funds. He’s sponsoring this move after reports that the coronavirus may have originated from Wuhan’s Institute of Virology lab.
“We don’t know whether the pandemic started in a lab in Wuhan or evolved naturally,” Paul said in a statement. “While Washington bureaucrats deny funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, experts believe otherwise. My amendment will ensure that this never happens in the future.”
Paul took to the Senate floor for the second time Tuesday to promote his amendment. In the meanwhile, he also pointed out the National Science Foundation’s wasteful spending.
“We spend about $8 billion a year with the National Science Foundation,” Paul said. “This bill’s going to increase their funding by 68% . . . don’t you think the American people deserve to know where their money is being spent?” He started with an example from the National Institute of Health, a sister organization to NSF. They spent over $800k to study the sexual promiscuity of Japanese Quails.
And the list goes on. Every poster he shared on the floor he also tweeted out online. He shared studies that cost anywhere from $30,000 to $1.5 million just to study inconsequential animal behaviors.
“We should not reward these people with more money,” Paul said. But, most importantly, “There’s a great deal of circumstantial evidence now that NIH money went to the Wuhan Virology Institute,” Paul said. So, he made his amendment because “the entire world’s economy” is at stake.
You can follow Jenny Goldsberry on Twitter @jennyjournalism

Healthcare
CA to provide all low-income illegal immigrants health care at a cost of ‘$2.7 billion a year’

On Thursday, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a $307.9 billion operating budget “that pledges to make all low-income adults eligible for the state’s Medicaid program by 2024 regardless of their immigration status” reports the Associated Press.
The guarantee of free health care for low-income immigrants here illegally, is a “move that will provide coverage for an additional 764,000 people at an eventual cost of about $2.7 billion a year” adds the AP.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health care nonprofit, people living in the country illegally in 2020 accounted for roughly 7% of the population nationwide, or about 22.1 million people. The border crisis and number of migrants entering the United States illegally has skyrocketed to historic levels since 2020 when President Joe Biden took office.
Medicaid nationwide is the current combination of federal and state governments assisting Americans and low-income adults and children to receive free health care, but the federal government does not cover those living here illegally.
“Some states, including California, have used their own tax dollars to cover a portion of health care expenses for some low-income immigrants” reports the AP. “Now, California wants to be the first to do that for everyone.”
“This will represent the biggest expansion of coverage in the nation since the start of the Affordable Care Act in 2014,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, a statewide consumer health care advocacy group. “In California we recognize (that) everybody benefits when everyone is covered.”
While 92% of Californians currently have some form of health insurance, “that will change once this budget is fully implemented, as adults living in the country illegally make up one of the largest groups of people without insurance in the state” the AP concludes.
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