Action Alert: Protect Medicaid

from the The CCD Grassroots Team:

We can’t emphasize enough how important it is for the disability community to take action NOW to strongly oppose the AHCA, particularly its devastating cuts and caps to Medicaid.

1.      CBO score for the AHCA is out:  Late yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office put out a CBO score for the AHCA.  The highlights include 23 million people losing insurance (including 14 million from Medicaid) and an $834 billion cut to Medicaid.  The Medicaid per capita caps have NOTHING to do with repeal of the ACA; this is simply a “pay for” for the rest of the bill.  This is an important talking point we should continue to emphasize.

2.      Recess is a critical time to make your voices heard in your state.  Legislators will be home from May 29 to June 2^nd.  You need to make sure your legislators know that the AHCA would decimate Medicaid and literally harm millions of seniors and people with disabilities.  As we discussed yesterday, there is no acceptable cap.   Please visit your legislators home offices to tell your story, attend events such as town halls and rallies (visithttps://www.resistancenearme.org/ for local events), and try to write op-eds to your paper.  For more ideas and links, see here.   

3.      Keep up the calls:  In person is best, but also continue the calls.  You can use this line that directly connects you to Republican Senators or Representatives in your state:  1-866-426-2631(English) or 1-877-736-7831 (Español) or call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.  For more information, including a script, see here.

Additional Resources:

·         The www.protectourmedicaid.org website collects materials for people with disabilities and their families and grassroots advocates.  You can learn more about per capita caps, look at the impact on your state, see how to take action, and see events.  Please share widely and let us know if you have any additional information you’d added to the website.  We are happy to work with state advocates to create state-specific pages on this site, add local events, etc.  Just email Alison Barkoff at abarkoff@cpr-ma.org. 

·      CCD Letter to Senate on AHCA, and Hill leave-behinds on Medicaid and the ACA -- with bullet point talking points and accompanying stats on effects of AHCA and per capita caps on people with disabilities

·      Information about how children are impacted by these caps including this paper on the AHCA’s block grants and EPSDT, this blog on school services,  and this on the general impact on kids. 

·      There are some great materials that have come out about per capita caps:

  

  Brooking's analysis of per-capita caps, which explains (1) how PCC's are a "one-sided [losing] bet" for states--states take all the risk for overspending but gain nothing for underspending (at 5); (2) how even a growth rate that matches actual growth in health care spending would result in cuts to states (at 15); and (3) how states that have lower spending now would be hurt relatively more under a per capita cap (at 12).  (More materials on per capita caps are available here.)  And of course, the proposed Trump budget would make these cuts worse, read more here.

·    Many people with disabilities (particularly people with psychiatric disabilities) are part of the Medicaid expansion population.  NHeLP just put out a new Faces of Medicaid Expansion -- describes Medicaid adult expansion as a catchall group meant to cover people who previously fell through the cracks and disrupts the "able-bodied" fallacy by noting the diverse range of individuals and families covered under Medicaid expansion, including parents and family caretakers, people with disabilities and chronic conditions, and low wage workers (including home care workers). There are also personal stories from enrollees in Michigan, Illinois and Ohio.

Thank you for all the incredible advocacy you are doing in your state, and please let us know how we can support you.