YES! It is shameful. According to KFF, 10.9 million people are expected to lose their Medicaid insurance and likely become uninsurable when the Republicans pass Trump’s BIG BEAUTIFUL (BULLSHIT) BILL. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities states that this is a conservative estimate and may be twice as high.
Among working-age adults, lacking health insurance increases the mortality risk by 25%.
Iowa’s Senator Joni Ernst (R) recently told Iowans, “Everyone is going to die.” Her flat statement was in response to a woman at her Town Hall who said the Medicaid cuts would cause people to die.
Joni is right. People will die; sick kids will probably die sooner. And the tooth fairy she’s worried about may come back to haunt her. Ernst can be counted on to support the cuts.
Sadly, here is an example of the trauma Republicans are forcing onto our people: Courtney Leader, a Missouri mother, warns that proposed Medicaid cuts are a matter of life or death for her 9-year-old daughter with brain damage and cerebral palsy. Leader says the family — mom, dad, and four other children — have private insurance but, “Without Medicaid [for our daughter],” Leader told her senator Jeff Hawley (R), “we would lose everything – our home, our vehicles and, eventually, our daughter.”
Leader’s 9-year-old daughter requires $1500 a month for the special “food” required for her mother to use in a feeding tube to feed her. This family’s full story can be read at: ‘This is not a luxury’: Families in Trump states agonize over GOP’s proposed Medicaid cuts by Jeff Zeleney with CNN.
Despite Senator Hawley’s kind words and numerous public protests, he is expected to vote for the bill.
Missouri is one of the ten most difficult states to apply for Medicaid. The other states are Mississippi (hardest!), Idaho, Texas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Indiana, South Carolina, Colorado, Alabama, and Missouri.
The more people get knocked out of insurance, the more money the federal government saves, and the happier Trump and his Congressional Republicans will be. Happier! Because they have dedicated the money toward funding more BIG tax breaks for the rich.
The Super-Rich need the money, e.g.,
- It takes a lot of money to be Super-Rich — Jeff Bezos and girlfriend Lauren Sanchez got married on a private island in Venice, Italy, this weekend. The wedding is estimated to cost $50 million. Read about it here.
- In Trump’s world, the SuperRich have to pay their bills, and they require a lot of play money. Cutting back on Medicaid will help them satisfy this growing demand for play money, which will not only enable the President to allocate more funds to the SuperRich.
Meanwhile, Republican tactics for removing people from Medicaid include not only adding new duplicate work requirements but also increasing paperwork to verify work and income conditions. People who often work two jobs to make ends meet will face even greater difficulty managing the paperwork because holding two jobs leaves less time for paperwork. The requirements are intentional; Republicans rely on this extra paperwork, likely required on a monthly basis, to be so burdensome that many eligible Medicaid recipients will fall behind. Miss a deadline? The insurance is canceled.
—Author Barbara Leach is a past member of the Executive Committees of the Democratic National Committee and the Association of State Democratic Chairs. From Iowa, she won elections in the State Party for twenty years in a row, and served in senior positions during the Clinton and Obama Administrations. She grew up in a small Iowa town and was a farm owner/manager for 17 years.