More than 3 million Pennsylvania residents benefit from Medicaid, but the US House Republicans’ plan to make massive cuts to the program puts 800,000 of them at risk of losing their coverage.
For Carly Morton and hundreds of thousands of other Pennsylvanians on Medicaid, President Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s proposed $880 billion cut to the healthcare program could be the difference between life and death.
Literally.
“ I would not be able to afford my medical care. I would have to choose between my medical care and my food, my medical care and the roof over my head, my medical care in the car that gets me to my job. That’s what the situation would be,” Morton explained. “I would have to be choosing between one basic need and another.”
Morton, a 31-year-old Beaver County resident, has 23 diagnosed medical conditions and is unable to work 40 hours a week because of the amount of time that she spends navigating her illnesses and the ripple effects they cause.
“The days that I don’t work, it’s a slew of things,” she said. “It’s getting to medical appointments for follow-ups and checkups. It’s handling medical phone calls to get refills on infusion supplies, injection supplies. It’s fighting with my insurance company to make sure things stay covered or get covered depending on the situation. It’s running to the pharmacy for medications. It’s spending hours in line at the food bank twice a month because my income is too small and my food stamps are not enough for me to cover all of my food needs. That’s a huge chunk of time.”
Earlier this year, Republicans in Congress passed a budget bill that recommended $880 billion in Medicaid cuts through May 2034 in order to pay for extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the country’s ultra wealthy.
According to the Center for American Progress, Pennsylvania would lose more than $34 billion in Medicaid funding during that time if those cuts were enacted, and over 800,000 Pennsylvanians could lose access to medical coverage.
Roughly 3.2 million children, seniors, people with disabilities and low-income residents have Medicaid in Pennsylvania.
US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) called the House Republicans’ plan to cut Medicaid the largest round of cuts in the program’s history, and in recent weeks, there seems to be growing discomfort with the idea of gutting Medicaid within some corners of the Republican Party.
Last week, a dozen US House Republicans signed a letter opposing cuts to the program.
“ I am one of many individuals who despite battling incredibly difficult health issues, really cares about being a part of the society and wants to contribute to it,” Morton said.
Without Medicaid, doing so would be much more difficult, if not impossible for Morton.
“As a group of people, many of us are unable to do that if we don’t get the care that we need, and these cuts are directly affecting us getting the care that we need, and that’s not fair,” she said. “ It’s not fair because then it makes it so that we are too sick to participate in the world and only a little bit of medicine and treatment makes it so that we can exist and function like everyone else.”
