It is amazing to read from local elected officials that there will not be cuts to medical care available to deserving low-income people in Virginia. It just ignores common sense to make such a claim. The recent “big beautiful bill” cut Medicaid by about $1 trillion over the next 10 years. How could $1 trillion be cut without services being cut? Although numbers are not yet final, the best estimate I could find is that Medicaid funding will be cut by 10 – 14 percent in Virginia. Could you go to the store with 10 – 14% fewer dollars, and expect to get the same stuff? How is that different than reducing health care funding by 10 – 14%? Cutting $1 trillion from the Medicaid budget is enormous– meaning health care will not be available to people who really need it. It is simply absurd to claim that such a large cut will have no impact. It defies logic.
Some partisan politicians claim that the cut will be okay because additional work requirements will force lazy and dishonest people out of the system, and overall health system costs will be reduced. Again – that is a bizarre argument. First, why would anyone claim without supporting data that many people are unemployed or not going to school simply out of laziness? Where did that idea come from? How many people are we talking about? How many have slipped through the government system that already is in place to detect and eliminate fraud? How will any new fraud detection system be an improvement, and will it cost more than it saves? Where are the reliable data and evidence? Second, the paperwork and bureaucratic barriers to enrolling in Medicaid are increasing tremendously. Anyone who has previously applied for Medicaid will know that it has been an extremely difficult process. This bill will make it worse. Many qualified people will simply be unable to navigate the system to get the services they need. It also adds tremendously to the workload of the state and local agencies – requiring growth in government rather than reducing this workforce. More workers will be needed to investigate people wanting to enroll and re-enroll. Of course, more government workers will need to be paid, with their paychecks coming from our tax dollars. More bureaucracy! Any decreases in health care costs could be more than matched by increases in government costs. Third, people who can’t get preventive services (like cholesterol medication) will have deteriorating health conditions, with expenses increasing along with impacting their health (such as heart attack victims going to hospital emergency rooms.) That’s expensive. This also includes folks who will not be able to afford vaccinations – for just one example we already are seeing the reemergence of measles throughout the country. Fourth, we should expect that early treatments for contagious diseases (including venereal diseases) also will decrease, greatly increasing disease spread throughout the population. (Not a topic most politicians want to talk about, but true.) Fifth, hospitals will not get paid for the services they provide to patients with low or no insurance coverage, with their expected response being to offer fewer services, and with many hospitals closing.
Virginia is a great place to live and work – and it is not due to a single political party. It would be very helpful if politicians were straightforward in their pronouncements, showcasing their actual values. If some think taxes should be reduced by removing health care support for the poor – they should simply say so. But saying that $1 trillion can be cut without affecting anyone – makes me think that they also may be wanting to sell us a bridge.
