Aurora single mom and teacher Jeannie Galacci cares for her teenage son with Down syndrome. Medicaid allows her to be his certified nursing assistant. It’s a lifeline, she says, that lets her provide the full-time care he needs while earning enough to keep their home. Screen grab from an Oct. 17 virtual roundtable discussion held by Colorado Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper.
The excruciating shutdown non-debate in Washington over cuts to Medicaid funding and Affordable Care Act tax credits isn’t an abstract fight about budgets or ideology. It’s about your neighbors who will face impossible choices if Congress doesn’t act.
During a virtual roundtable last week, Colorado Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper warned that Republican leaders’ refusal to restore funding for Medicaid and extend ACA premium tax credits would rip health care away from millions of Americans. He calls the measure “the Big Bad Betrayal Act,” estimating that 15 million people nationwide could lose coverage and that premiums for millions more could double.
Those cuts or mushrooming insurance costs would be yours, not some faceless statistic, and certainly not an “illegal immigrant” as Republicans have repeatedly lied about.
The disaster is already hitting Coloradans across the state. Scared and hurting are parents, small-business owners, teachers, retirees, and caregivers in every part of the state, and from every political stripe.
Commerce City resident Mercedes Von Pichl and her husband run a small music-lesson business. For years, they could afford family insurance coverage only because of ACA subsidies. They lowered their premium from $900 a month to just over $200. Then came a premature baby and weeks in the NICU. Their baby has a rare genetic condition requiring lifelong care. Now their monthly bill tops $1,100. If the subsidies vanish, they’ll shoulder the full cost, which could easily double.
“How are we going to be able to afford insurance for our family?” she asked. “Do we forego insurance and hope they don’t get injured or sick? These are decisions no family should have to make in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.”
In Conifer, longtime tech worker CJ Miller said his family’s plan through the Colorado insurance exchange could nearly triple next year because of the changes created in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” His premium could soon exceed his mortgage.
“I’m a tech employee, and I earn a decent salary, and this is my story,” Miller said. “Think about the reality for service industry workers, for small-business owners. This fight isn’t just coming to your front door, it’s already here.”
The crisis isn’t just about numbers. It’s about security and people’s lives. When a family like the Millers or Von Pichls faces premiums rivaling a mortgage, the American dream becomes an accounting nightmare.
Nicole Villas lives in rural Gilpin County and cares full-time for her 20-year-old son, Aiden. He has a catastrophic seizure disorder that requires around-the-clock supervision. Medicaid’s developmental disability waiver pays for therapies and medications that private insurance won’t cover. Those are services that keep him alive.
Recent federal cuts, Villas said, forced Colorado to trim those services by about 10%. That might sound small on paper, but it’s devastating in practice.
“A 10% cut is unfathomable to most people,” she said. “If I weren’t here, my husband couldn’t keep working, and the tax burden on the community would be much higher. These cuts are life-altering.”
Aurora single mom and APS teacher Jeannie Galacci cares for her teenage son with Down syndrome. Medicaid allows her to be his certified nursing assistant. It’s a lifeline, she says, that lets her provide the full-time care he needs while earning enough to keep their home.
“I worry about re-certifications becoming more difficult and what that means for us,” she said. “Medicaid and its waivers are what make a meaningful life possible for my son.”
And in Wellington, retired state employee Diane Schwindt said the ACA marketplace is the only thing standing between her and homelessness. After a car crash, her insurance covered the surgeries and rehabilitation that her pension for working most of her adult life for the State of Colorado couldn’t. Without those tax credits, she said, she might have to drop coverage altogether until she qualifies for Medicare.
“This is life or death,” Schwindt said through tears. “I don’t want to become homeless because I get in a car accident. We’ve worked all our lives, and now we’re being punished.”
These five Coloradans are not political activists. They’re not on TV or marching in protest. They’re not “illegal” immigrants. They’re like the hundreds of thousands of other at-risk Coloradans who are Republicans, Democrats, and people who couldn’t care less about party labels. What they share is the everyday American expectation that working hard should mean being able to afford to see a doctor and keep your children healthy.
The looming healthcare cuts threaten that promise. Ending the ACA premium credits will push many middle-income families off coverage entirely. Gutting Medicaid funding will strand seniors, people with disabilities, and caregivers who depend on it for basic survival. And because fewer people will pay into the system, the cost of insurance will rise for everyone, even those who are lucky enough to have relatively luxurious employer plans.
Hickenlooper is right. Health care costs will “double unless Congress does something.”
Some in Congress insist the government can’t afford to maintain these supports. The truth is, we can’t afford not to. When families lose coverage, they delay treatment, skip medications, and end up in emergency rooms, driving costs even higher for taxpayers and hospitals alike.
That’s not an opinion. That’s the conclusion of decades of documented research.
The human cost is far steeper. Parents forgo their own care to keep a child insured. Retirees risk bankruptcy after one accident. Teachers like Galacci burn out trying to fill gaps the system creates.
Coloradans pride themselves on independence and hard work, but no one can “bootstrap” their way out of a medical crisis. What these families need is a system that doesn’t collapse when Washington plays this kind of punitive politics.
Democrats and Republicans should end the shutdown, restore Medicaid funding, and extend the ACA premium tax credits now.
Behind every line item in the budget are your neighbors like Mercedes, CJ, Nicole, Jeannie, and Diane. These are people who have done everything right and are now just one vote away from losing the care that keeps them alive.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com
Everything is a crisis according to Democrats. The Biden administration used the global pandemic as an excuse to greatly expand their social welfare state in many ways, including increasing the Obamacare insurance premium subsidies. They told us they were meant to be temporary until the pandemic ended. I don’t remember hearing any stories about people dying in the streets before these subsidies were increased. But as usual, Democrats now claim these temporary programs now need to be made permanent or everyone will die. All we are trying to do is to return subsidies to the level they were before the pandemic.
How many times have we heard that it is between “food or medicine.” Funny thing, we never hear it is between payments for that big truck I always wanted and medicine, or between that new dress and medicine, or between Starbucks twice a day and medicine, or between Broncos season tickets and medicine. You get the picture. Many people are just deciding the have other priorities for their money; especially the young who feel healthy.
We all know that the socialist Democrats have long desired government run healthcare for everyone. This is just another effort to move in that direction.
We have to get our spending and national debt under control or we will truly face a crisis of unbelievable dimension.
Amen
“government run healthcare for everyone”
You mean like EVERY OTHER INDUSTRIALIZED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD? You’re right. They’re all sooooo stupid and obviously unsustainable…??
And I’d love to see some proof of broncos tickets and starbucks. Smacks of Reagan’s imaginary welfare queens picking up their food stamps in their rolls royces and all that. Reality begs to differ with you on so many topics.
“You mean like EVERY OTHER INDUSTRIALIZED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD? You’re right. They’re all sooooo stupid and obviously unsustainable…??”
Apparently so, since they’ve been sucking off of our defense capability for nearly 80 years.
End NATO and we’d see how sustainable these systems really are. Even Canada has to encourage its citizens to MAID themselves now, due to the costs of long-term healthcare.
The reality is that working people and retirees are worried about how their lives will be altered, while Wall Street rejoices as CEOs, billionaires, and the wealthy will enjoy tax cuts. The GOP announced today that $3BB in corporate welfare will go to farmers, while SNAP benefits for the poor are in danger. Donald Trump wants the US government to pay him $250MM for his court costs. The so-called Big Beautiful Bill will be a transfer of wealth taking from the working poor and giving to the wealthy. Democrats rightfully refuse to “bless” this nonsense. It has never been clearer that it is Democrats who are on the side of the average American, not Republicans who refuse to fund healthcare subsidies to working people who otherwise would not be able to afford exponential increases in health insurance.
“It has never been clearer that it is Democrats who are on the side of the average American, not Republicans who refuse to fund healthcare subsidies to working people who otherwise would not be able to afford exponential increases in health insurance.”
Why should the subsides be funded if your sainted government program completely failed to actually lower the cost of healthcare? Over $2 trillion a year for Medicare/Medicaid, and counting.
I notice none of the people complaining about this are doing so in regards to actually addressing the costs of healthcare on the front end, which would actually result in more affordable care on the back end.
Why does a procedure that cost $1,000 inflation-adjusted before the “Great (haha) Society”–a normal birth delivery and two days in a private room–now get charged $25K to insurance with a $17K “adjusted” payment? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to save up the $1,000 and pay up front? Or is there simply an expectation that healthcare is only allowed to be “affordable” if it’s being subsidized by a government program, and the actual costs are irrelevant?
No wonder the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services is paying out over $2.2 trillion a year now, plus another $125 billion for ACA “subsidies” that haven’t actually lowered the cost of healthcare.