Set aside the allegations and counter-claims between Congressional Republicans and Democrats about whether the GOP, President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and his tech bros want to or even can cut hundreds of millions of dollars out of the Medicaid budget, it would be catastrophic for Colorado and the nation.
Over the last few weeks, congressional Republicans have identified about $880 million in “possible” cuts to a “possible” program like Medicaid, coincidentally about 10% of its annual budget.
Despite the coy distraction, it’s no secret that Republicans are eying Medicaid and other safety net programs as ripe for cuts.
It’s important to understand what Medicaid is and is not.
Medicaid is a national health-insurance program administered and partially funded by states, primarily serving the nation’s poorest citizens and those with disabilities.
Medicaid is not a slush fund doled out to undocumented immigrants or a source of wealth for people who are jobless, homeless or both, as right-wing social media campaigns insist.
More than 94 million Americans are enrolled in Medicaid, according to KFF research. Although elderly and disabled make up about 25% of Medicaid recipients, they account for about half of all Medicaid spending.
In Colorado, Medicaid pays for about two-thirds of all nursing home patients, according to state officials.
A statewide Medicaid catastrophe would engulf nursing homes, across the state and across the nation — first.
Because the U.S. healthcare and elder care systems are so cumbersome, expensive and dysfunctional, hundreds of millions of Americans depend on Medicaid for assisted living and nursing home care. They have no choice.
A cruel part of qualifying for Medicaid in order to obtain nursing home or elder care is that applicants must essentially be penniless, or make themselves that way. It means hardworking Americans who get to the end of their work life with a home, some furnishings, a Social Security check and not much else have one choice when they can no longer care for themselves or need substantial assistance.
These Americans are forced to clean out their bank accounts, if they have any reserves at all, sell cars or a home and present themselves as virtually bankrupt to qualify for Medicaid benefits.
Most then turn over their benefits directly to a nursing home, and often some or most of their Social Security earnings as well.
If Congress, or even Colorado, were to make substantial cuts to Medicaid, these seniors would be at risk of eviction, penniless and homeless.
The nursing homes themselves would be at risk of financial collapse. Few state residents are able to pay full price for nursing home services, often well over $120,000 a year. Booting nearly two-thirds of nursing home patients into the street would mean that the remaining residents would have to pay dramatically more.
As an increasing number of nursing homes closed, prices would get even higher.
Many families would be forced to take their elderly parents in, rather than force them onto the streets, creating an entirely new layer of disaster as working family members would be forced to quit their jobs to care for ailing and elderly parents in their homes.
All of this would be occurring at the same time millions of children, disabled residents and other working members of families lose healthcare, ignoring health problems until they become a cause for expensive emergency room visits. Those live-or-death visits would be paid for by hospitals, and passed along to insured consumers.
Hospitals, under law having to treat life-threatening ailments, without Medicaid reimbursement, would buckle under the financial strain.
Those physician practices, hospitals and treatment centers able to stay open amid such economic chaos would be forced to pass along huge cost increases to insured and wealthy patients, creating yet another spiral effect on the healthcare industry as a whole.
Despite the uninformed and maligned narrative promoted by some Congressional Republicans, Medicaid is not a “Blue State” luxury. Medicaid is a critical component of America’s flawed health care system, and especially critical to the nation’s rural, disabled and working poor adults and elders.
The United States is clearly in for endless “unintended” disasters created by the incompetent attempt by Trump, Elon and his tech-bros to reduce federal spending without any federal, or adult, planning.
But inflicting the defective DOGE budget saw on Medicaid will undoubtedly result in the deaths of thousands and possibly millions of Americans.
Aurora’s Congressional Rep. Jason Crow, as well as Colorado’s two senators, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, are already in front of the effort to stave damage to Medicaid.
It’s up to every Aurora and Colorado resident to reach out to friends and relatives elsewhere to contact their congressional representatives to let them know Medicaid is off limits for Trump’s schemes and antics.
Too much is at stake for anything less.
Medicaid costs well over a trillion dollars a year now. Between it and Medicare, the delta between FHIT and spending equaled the deficit in FY24.
If you want to protect Medicaid, figure out how to ding hospitals that charge $25k for a live birth and two nights in a private room that cost $1000 inflation adjusted 60 years ago, rather than whinge about cuts to protect the status quo.
You kind of give the game away when you start talking about “60 years ago”.
I wonder if some of the many billions of dollars our country and Colorado has spent on the 10 million economic immigrants that the Biden/Harris administration invited into our country could have been better spent on our Medicaid programs for U.S. citizens?
Why should government be in the business of 24 hour nursing home housing, feeding, medicating, and caring for the elderly? It is an untenable expensive practice that is ripe for lawsuits, fraud, mismanagement, and short staffing. It is counter to the universal and longstanding traditions of caring for one’s own family during the last years of life.