It is hard to imagine a more appalling trade: sacrificing the health of working class and low-income families so that the ultra-rich can grow even richer. But this is precisely what Republican leaders are calling for — massive cuts to Medicaid to fund tax cuts for billionaires.
Should this plan move forward, it would amount to one of the largest transfers of wealth from the working Americans and poor people to the rich that our country has ever seen. Nearly $900 billion dollars in proposed Medicaid cuts would jeopardize lifesaving care for one out of every five Americans — including military veterans, low-wage workers, seniors and children with disabilities — while erasing decades of progress combating health inequities.
Every American must know what is at stake and demand that our elected representatives in Washington wholly reject proposed Medicaid cuts.
Medicaid is one of the most successful and popular social safety net programs in our nation’s history. Born out of the civil rights movement and created through the Social Security Amendments of 1965, it was designed as a needs-based health program to provide care to low-income families who couldn’t otherwise access health care. Today, more than 70 million Americans are enrolled in the program — 20 million of whom are eligible thanks to the Medicaid expansion granted by the Affordable Care Act.
The members of my union, 1199SEIU, provide care to tens of thousands of Medicaid beneficiaries every day. In our nursing homes, nearly two-thirds of seniors rely on Medicaid to cover the cost of their daily care. More than 40% of pregnant women have their births covered by Medicaid. One third of our nation’s children are Medicaid enrollees.
Medicaid is the primary source of public funding for home- and community-based services which allow more than four million people with disabilities to remain in their own homes. The large majority of adult Medicaid recipients under the age of 65 are employed — whether it’s in health care, food service, retail, or the many other essential industries where the work is crucial, but the pay is low.
Beyond being the most important health care program in the nation, Medicaid is also among the most effective anti-poverty programs, owing to the correlation between access to health care and one’s economic wellbeing. One study found, for example, that “Medicaid alone has a larger impact on child poverty than all non-health means-tested benefits combined.”
Americans broadly recognize Medicaid’s importance, across political and ideological lines. In our hyperpolarized climate, it is one of the very few issues that voters overwhelmingly agree on. According to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll, 27% of Americans hold a favorable view of Medicaid, and 4 out of 5 believe that Medicaid funding should be increased or at least kept at current levels. President Trump certainly acknowledges the politics of this and recently promised that he would “love and cherish” Medicaid.
But one cannot “love and cherish” Medicaid while taking an axe to it. Here is the Republican dilemma: they want to find $5.5 trillion dollars so they can extend for another decade the 2017 tax cuts and additional business tax cuts. This would overwhelmingly benefit the rich. In fact, $3.7 trillion would go just to those making more than $400,000 a year. What single federal program could they loot to find most of what they need for this scheme? Medicaid.
Republicans are trying to hide the dismantling of Medicaid through their typical “waste, fraud, and abuse” narrative. They talk of imposing “per capita” caps on spending, eliminating federal matching funds for state Medicaid programs, and imposing “work requirements” for Medicaid enrollees (even though two-thirds of people on Medicaid are children, people with disabilities, or seniors).
Yet states would be faced with massive budget holes to make up for lost health care funding, and Americans would experience complicated bureaucratic hurdles just to prove their continued eligibility for the program.
We must not let this happen. As our members of Congress put together our nation’s budget, we must tell them that Medicaid is non-negotiable. Every one of us has someone in their life — a mother or father, a grandparent or a child, a spouse or a friend, who is today or will one day rely on Medicaid for the care they need. This is one of the most successful and efficient health care programs our nation has ever created, and it delivers essential care to people of all ages.
Medicaid is vital to our public health, and we must build a nationwide movement to defend this program that millions of us rely on.
Gresham is President of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, the largest union of health care workers in the United States.