Senate rejects Bush’s Medicaid cuts

After a mass outcry against the draconian Medicaid cuts proposed by the Bush administration, the Senate voted March 17 to remove $14 billion in proposed cuts from its version of next year’s national budget and create a one-year commission to recommend program changes.

That seven Senate Republicans joined all 45 Democrats shows the extent of nation wide popular opposition to cuts that would have slashed health-care funding for some 53 million low-income people: pregnant women, seniors, disabled people and uninsured children.

The vote is a stinging rebuke to the Bush administration’s domestic agenda. The Asso ci ated Press said it amounted to “killing the heart of the plan’s deficit reduc tion and dealing an embarrassing setback to President Bush and Repub lican leaders.”

However, the struggle to stop the cuts is not over. The House narrowly passed a budget proposal calling for more severe Medi caid cuts—$20 billion. Health-care advocates and unions will need to keep up the pressure as budget discussions continue.

Jointly funded by the federal and state governments, Medicaid pays for necessary medical care for low-income patients. Covered services include doctor visits, inpatient and some outpatient hospital services, laboratory and x-ray fees, nursing home, family planning and pregnancy-related services, home health care, nurse-midwife services and periodic screening for children under 21. Some states offer additional benefits.

Medicaid funding accounts for up to 22 percent of state budgets and is the largest source of federal revenue to the states. Federal Medicaid cuts would have a devastating ripple effect nationwide at a time when health-care and drug costs are rising, giant low-wage employers like Wal-Mart do not offer health insurance, and workers fortunate enough to have work-based health coverage lose it due to layoffs.

One such Medicaid patient, Cynthia Bryant, spoke out on March 17 at a rally in Livonia, Mich., against the proposed cuts. A spinal cord injury at work left her paralyzed from the waist down, and Bryant turned to Medicaid when her health insurance and financial support from her family ran out.

“I don’t want to see any of my care be potentially cut,” she said, “because I’m making progression and hope to someday live on my own.”

Unions mobilize against cuts

New York state receives the most federal Medicaid funding. Unions representing health workers there are mobilizing against proposed cuts.

In New York, Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 37 and other public health-care unions held a massive, week-long petition drive at 12 city public hospitals and facilities March 7-11 to give patients, their families and city health-care workers a voice against the cuts. (dc37.net)

The city’s public hospitals could lose $300 million if Medicaid cuts go through, while the Family Health Plus insurance program for low-wage workers faces $17 million in cuts.

“DC 37 members fought hard to save public hospitals when the city wanted to sell them,” said Executive Director Lillian Roberts. “Now we’re speaking up again to stop proposed Medicaid cuts that threaten to undo the gains that city hospitals and facilities have made in providing state-of-the-art health care to those most in need.”

Local 1199 Service Employees union represents tens of thousands of health-care workers in nonprofit hospitals and facilities as well as home-care workers state wide. The union will hold major rallies against Medicaid cuts in eight cities across New York state on April 7. (1199seiu.org)

“The national priorities in Washington today are fighting wars, redistributing wealth upward and starving programs that serve essential human needs,” said 1199 SEIU President Dennis Rivera in a call to action to union members.

At a recent conference of Medicaid Matters New York, a coalition of more than 100 community-based organizations, one participant outlined another challenge of the Medicaid struggle.

“There’s a war going on,” he said. “But as the Bush administration cuts back on veterans’ benefits and closes VA hospitals, where does he think injured vets will go? They’ll go on Medicaid.” (medicaidmatters.org)

All the more reason, say health-care advocates, to redouble efforts to stop the Medicaid cuts.