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“Cuts to the Affordable
Care Act, Medicaid, Medicare and other healthcare programs
carry heavy costs to families, businesses and helath care
providers who depend on federal funding to hire staff,
provide services and keep their doors open,” said Rev. John
Walthall, pastor of Mt. Ararat Baptist Church. Walthall
noted that last year’s efforts to repeal the ACA and
dismantle Medicaid had already resulted in a reversal of the
recent trend that saw a decrease in the number of uninsured
people.
Art Walker turned his
attention to the impact the proposed cuts will have
disproportionately on women. “Women, who depend on Medicaid
more than men for their own healthcare and for their
families, would bear the brunt of these change,” he said.
“Women are the majority of Medicaid enrollees; in fact
two-thirds of adults with Medicaid coverage are women,” he
added and also noted that repealing that key provision left
13 million more people without insurance and had increased
premiums by $2,000 a year for some families in order “to pay
for permanent tax breaks for corporations like Apple, Wells
Fargo and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in the tax plan.”
The theme of the harm the
proposed budget cuts will have on women was continued in
remarks by Marcia Dinkins who noted that “thanks to the ACA,
the number of working-age women (ages 19 – 64) without
health insurance fell by almost half from 2010 to 2016, from
19 million to 11 million.”
Dinkins said that low
income women made particularly large gains in obtaining
insurance across racial lines and that “between 2013 and
2015, 5.1 million women of color ages 19 – 64 gained health
insurance coverage, a growth rate of about 18 percent.”
Repealing the ACA, said
Dinkins, will allow insurance companies t opt out of
essential health benefits like maternity coverage,
prescription drug coverage and mental health services,
“forcing women to pay more and creating an insurmountable
barrier for poorer women and for women of color,
particularly black women who already have a much higher risk
of complication and die at over three times the rate of
white women inchildbirth”
Pastor Nicholas Betts
noted that Medicaid isn’t the only federal program in danger
of being eliminated or cut drastically. “The budget
blueprint also slashes $213 billion or about 30 percent of
funding for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)
or food stamps, which provides families with the ability to
put meals on the table.” Over 40 million American families
struggle with food insecurity including seven million
seniors and 13 million children.
As Betts said, SNAP kept
8.4 million people out of poverty in 2015 including 3.8
million children.
Rev. John Algee spoke of
the cuts that will impact housing assistance. “Trump’s
budget also cuts housing assistance to low income people by
over $7 billion next year even though rent across the
country is historically high and unaffordable for most low
wage working people, seniors and many people with
disabilities.”
The budget ends the
Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LHEAP) which
helps households making under 150 percent of poverty pay for
heat and utilities.
Rev. Davis observed that
the Trump budget includes over $3.6 billion in cuts for
public education “including Title II – used in part to
recruit and retain teachers and support principals – and the
21st Century Learning Centers block grants, which
pay for enrichment programs after school that are
particularly important for low income children and working
parents who lack affordable child care.”
Closing the program was
State Rep. Michael Ashford who thanked TUSA for stepping out
and bringing much needed attention to the budget proposal.
Ashford added his own concerns about some of the other
budget cuts under proposal such as the $500 million to the
infrastructure and the $1.19 billion cut to the after school
program.
“We want to make our
community aware of where our state is going under President
Trump,” he said.
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