THIS TIME ON CODE WACK!
What will happen when Medicaid is slashed for millions of people as a result of Trump’s H.R. 1, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill?” How will the largest rollback of the social safety net in over 50 years harm children, families, and rural communities – and what could it mean for states that recently expanded Medicaid, like North Carolina?
To find out, we spoke to Jennifer Wells, director of Economic Justice at Community Change Action, where she leads the organization’s work to advance policies and practices that improve the material conditions of low-income communities. This is the second episode in a two-part series.
Check out the Transcript and Show Notes for more!
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SHOW NOTES
WE DISCUSS
How would you characterize the upcoming Medicaid and other health program cuts in Trump’s H.R. 1, that will drop millions of people – poor people – from the Medicaid program?
Wells: “I don’t think we can even conceptualize, in truth, the consequences of this bill and the implications of what will happen to folks day to day on their health, whether it be their housing, whether it be food, whether it be public health.
“Imagine a COVID-esque pandemic now taking shape when people have less access to doctors, less access to medicine, less access to care, or are having to work in order to prove that they are eligible and deserve to just have the basic healthcare met.
“I’m also thinking about this as a consequence, thinking as children get sick, as parents get sick, how much work they’re going to miss because they’re not gonna be able to get healthy again.
“They’re not gonna be able to recover, they’re not gonna have access to the treatment to recover … and that’s gonna have an impact on the economy in so many other ways that if a pandemic does arise again, how quickly that will spread because people don’t have access to treatment, they aren’t getting information they need to stop it. They’re not getting the medicines they need to cure it. And so it’s just huge, huge consequences are looming for us.”
So how will these Medicaid cuts work? What are they targeting first?
Wells: “They’re targeting – first – the budget for the states, right? And so they’re cutting the match at the federal level to states as to the funding for the program, and in particular, going after those states that have seen the importance not only of Medicaid, but that it being expanded to … other folks that are in need of healthcare, folks that are in need of substance use treatment and have extended that to those folks postpartum, maternal healthcare, and have extended that, to folks that qualify. They’re gonna be the first folks that are gonna be cut.
“The idea is that additional funding is immediately gonna stop at the federal level, it’s gonna trickle down, and states are gonna have to fill the gap of what the federal funding will cut. And most states right now are struggling to break even and their budgets. And so that means immediately, programs are gonna have to be cut. People are gonna have to lose access to these programs immediately for state budgets to function. Most states say that they can’t move forward unless they have a balanced budget. And this is disrupting the whole budget picture for most states in particular, again, the states that were able to expand Medicaid and took the opportunity to expand Medicaid, which was the right decision. These states are a mixture. There are states that are run by Republicans, there are states that are run by Democrats, but all saw the benefit to their residents when they accepted expanded Medicaid. But again, that’s gonna be the first thing that’s gonna be cut…
“… And that is at the heart of what this bill is going to do. It’s cruel in its explicit ways of being, and it’s cruel in implicitly how it will operate and how it will decimate and devastate people at the community level, right? The hospitals that rely on Medicaid and a lot more hospitals than folks realize rely on Medicaid funding to provide care, to provide programs.”
Talk about the impact Medicaid cuts will have on states that expanded Medicaid, either under the ACA, or more recently?
Wells: I think … of the state that I worked and learned the most in, which was West Virginia [which was] a red state that saw the benefits of expanded Medicaid and all across our, across our political ecosystem understood that it needed to be expanded and it needed to pass in … a state that was devastated when pharmaceutical companies preyed upon our people in that state and created the crisis of the opioid system.
[The opiate crisis] wasn’t individual lacking. It wasn’t the failure [or] the moral failure of the folks in West Virginia. It was pharmaceutical companies who preyed upon them to create this crisis. And how understanding moving those folks into treatment and into sustained treatment is now under threat. That program is funded in large part by Medicaid expansion.
“To lose that funding means you are putting hundreds and thousands of people’s lives in jeopardy. And so those are the devastations that I’m like, the trauma, the horror … ”
Helpful Links
The Protective Role of Medicaid Expansion for Low‐Income People During the COVID‐19 Pandemic, National Institute of Health
Shifting the Burden: How the Recently Passed Budget Reconciliation Package Reshapes SNAP and Strains State Budgets, Food Research & Action Center
What’s behind the health care fight that led to the government shutdown, NPR
How Did West Virginia Become the State Hardest Hit by the Opioid Epidemic?, Narconan
What to Expect From States When They’re Expecting Big Changes Due to HR 1, Georgetown University, Center for Children and Families
Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ is deadly to already vulnerable groups across the U.S., Prism Reports
Episode Transcript
Read the full episode transcript.
Guest Biographies: Jennifer Wells
Jennifer Wells is the Director of Economic Justice at Community Change/Action, where she leads the organization’s work to advance policies and practices that improve the material conditions of low-income communities.
Over recent years, she has earned recognition as the 2020 Marshall University Commencement Speaker, 2020 TEDx Speaker, and 2018 National Association of Social Workers West Virginia Chapter’s Social Worker of the Year. She has provided commentary and been featured on National platforms like Essence, USA Today, Vox, and the Insider.
Jennifer was born and raised in New Orleans and deeply understands the social and economic issues that impact our communities. She is available to speak on health equity issues, including access to healthcare, Medicaid, birth justice, and their impacts on Black people living in rural and urban areas.
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