John,

Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) are lifelines for 91 million adults and children. And -- thanks to the slim majority in the House of Representatives -- those lifelines are at a great risk of being cut.

Congress agreed last year that states may resume checking the eligibility of Medicaid beneficiaries and may start terminating those deemed ineligible starting this April. It will be a daunting process for states to manage so many redeterminations of eligibility. HHS itself estimated that as many as 15 million could lose Medicaid, some because their incomes had risen, but others because they did not provide timely proof despite still being eligible. Some won’t respond because the state does not have their correct address. Nearly two-thirds of Latinos projected to lose Medicaid will really still be eligible; that will also be true of more than half of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and 40% of African Americans.¹ Large numbers of children may lose coverage despite remaining eligible for Medicaid or CHIP.  

Advocates and some state administrators are working hard to prevent this unprecedented loss of coverage. But some states, such as Florida, seem intent on dropping as many people as possible.²

Sadly, extremists in Congress want to make things worse.

In one of his concessions to win over right-wing members of his caucus and win the Speaker’s gavel, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) agreed to hold the debt ceiling increase hostage in order to extract cuts from critical social programs. With news that the U.S. has reached our debt ceiling limit, the threats to Medicaid and CHIP are real.

Cutting even more people from Medicaid and CHIP via drastic budget cuts is cruelty personified. It is also a stunningly backwards step that will harm our children and leave adults with untreated health conditions that will make it harder for them to have stability at work. And, it will prevent us from making long-overdue progress in providing home and community-based services for people with disabilities and older Americans.

Congress needs to hear from you! Click here to let them know why you oppose any and all cuts to Medicaid and CHIP. Send a direct message to Congress today.

Extremists in Congress like Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) have been forced to abandon their calls to cut Social Security and Medicare. But proposals continue to be floated to tie cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and many other basic needs programs to an increase in the debt ceiling. This is recklessly irresponsible and we must tell Congress to stop threatening our economy and the well-being of our people.

We’re still dealing with the ramifications of a once-in-a-century deadly worldwide pandemic. Millions of people are living with the effects of Long COVID and there’s still the highly contagious RSV respiratory virus that is continuing to spread among babies and children.

Medicaid is the biggest source of funding for substance use disorder treatment. More than half of America’s children receive their health care through Medicaid/CHIP. What we really need is to invest in providing health coverage to people with low incomes and to make sure that care-givers can get decent pay. Instead, some in Congress want to put a stranglehold on Medicaid by capping its funds, or to deny Medicaid to people with unstable work histories.

These cuts will mean more rural hospitals will close and millions more people will lose health care. This is unconscionable.

Access to health care is an inalienable right. We cannot allow one political party with the slimmest of majorities -- that’s controlled by an extreme faction -- to cruelly deny health coverage to millions of people.

Send a direct message to Congress demanding they do everything in their power to protect Medicaid and CHIP.

We need our champions in Congress to fight back and defend these vital programs for everyone who needs them -- including children, people with disabilities, and people of color, all who would be hit disproportionately hard by a failure to fund Medicaid adequately.

Thank you for all you do to defend the health care of vulnerable people and communities,

Deborah Weinstein
Executive Director, Coalition on Human Needs

¹ https://unidosus.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/unidosus_shrinkingthemedicaidcliff.pdf
² https://ccf.georgetown.edu/2023/01/20/hundreds-of-thousands-of-children-could-lose-coverage-in-florida-alone-as-u-s-approaches-high-stakes-medicaid-unwinding/