Mark Cuban said he was “embarrassed” to find out some of his staff were having to use government benefit programs.
“When I found out I had employees at our arena on public assistance, I immediately gave raises to every hourly employee and their managers,” Cuban said of staff working for the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, adding that he was “embarrassed” to make this discovery.
“It’s just wrong,” Cuban, who bought a majority stake in the Mavericks in 2000 and retains minority ownership, said in an X post.
“The best way to reduce the cost of Medicaid is to name and shame big employers that pay their full time employees so little, they qualify for Medicaid,” the billionaire wrote in a different post on X on Thursday.
President Donald Trump has demanded that his “big beautiful bill” be passed by July 4. The legislation would impose significant limits on Medicaid, a healthcare government program that more than 70 million Americans rely on.
Under the bill, childless adults who do not have a disability between 19 and 64 would have to work at least 80 hours per month to qualify for Medicaid.
The Congress Budget Office estimated that a previous version of the legislation would save over $900 billion in federal spending over the next decade. $700 billion of these savings would come from Medicaid and Affordable Care Act cuts. The CBO projected that nearly 11 million Americans would lose their insurance because of these changes introduced by the tax bill by 2034.
Cuban, a frequent critic of Trump, said he thinks reductions to Medicaid should come from employers.
“When a large employer pays so little that their full time employees qualify for Medicaid , (or any public assistance ) we the taxpayers are effectively subsidizing that big company,” he wrote in a post on X.
Cuban said CEOs could afford to take their employees off Medicaid by accepting less profit and asking shareholders to increase the price-to-earnings ratio they receive.
He called this “the right thing to do for the country” in a post on X.
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