Medicaid may be raided to pay for tax cuts
Congress has officially reconvened, with health care issues — and Medicaid revisions in particular — likely to top the 119th’s agenda.
First Focus on Childrenjoined more than 340 organizations who have sent a letter to Congressional leadership demanding that lawmakers “protect, preserve, and strengthen Medicaid.”
“Medicaid insures 38 million U.S. children and covers more than 40 percent of all births in the country, giving mothers and babies a healthy start,” said Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus on Children. “We join our fellow advocates in strongly opposing any attempt by lawmakers to restrict, cut or cap Medicaid coverage for any reason, and especially to pay for tax cuts for wealthy Americans. We should not sacrifice our children to billionaires.”
Read the full letter at this link.
Congress already has demonstrated its willingness to leave children in the lurch. Lawmakers struck $200 million dollars in pediatric cancer research from the spending bill at the close of last session, and sank several other bills that would have authorized combination cancer treatments for children, improved families’ ability to access critical out-of-state care, encouraged pharmaceutical companies to complete required studies on pediatric drugs, and otherwise supported children with cancer.
Republican lawmakers — who will have a slim majority of 220 seats in the 119th Congress — led this charge to target children. Read more about the “shenanigans” that led Congress to vote against the 15,000 children diagnosed each year with cancer in this new brief from First Focus on Children.