Two congressmen representing districts in the North Bay gave a preview Friday of how potential Medicaid cuts could impact local healthcare systems and residents.
U.S. Reps. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, and Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, spoke at a health clinic in Santa Rosa, calling on their colleagues to reject slashing Medicaid or Medicare as part of massive spending reductions proposed in the recently passed federal budget draft.
They also warned of potentially compounding impacts from the about 83,000 layoffs announced for employees at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
The Republican-led House of Representatives passed a draft budget plan last month that outlines $880 billion in cuts over a decade to health spending budgeted by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which sets Medicaid and Medicare funding.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, and other Republicans who voted for the draft bill have said that no cuts to Medicaid will be made. However, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a letter to lawmakers that the committee's spending showed only about $380 billion in outlays that aren't earmarked for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP.
That would leave a gap of about $500 billion that the committee would be mandated to reduce, even if all other spending was eliminated.
That analysis led Thompson and Huffman to arrange the hybrid press conference at the Dutton campus of the Santa Rosa Community Health Center. Sonoma County Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, healthcare providers and advocates also spoke out against potential Medicaid cuts.
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Thompson said about a third of all Californians have health insurance through Medicaid, which is called Medi-Cal in the state. He said one of the counties he represents has more than half its residents on the program.
"If you take that kind of money out of any healthcare system in any county of the United States of America, one of two things is going to happen: either the healthcare providers are going to fold, or the cuts are going to be so severe that healthcare will be drastically limited," Thompson said.
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Huffman said cuts to Medicaid would have ripple consequences throughout the healthcare system, leading to what he called "spillover effects." He said elders with nursing care, people with disabilities, and people who had become eligible for Medicaid through its expansion in the Affordable Care Act were examples of those who could lose their insurance if cuts are enacted at the level that could be required.
He said proposed cuts to the Veterans Affairs workforce would also jolt the greater healthcare system if veterans can't find adequate care.
"All of us have a tremendous stake in this. All of us need to see it coming," Huffman said, adding that people should hold Congress accountable.
Hopkins said that Medi-Cal pays for more than half the births in California and covers critical prenatal and postpartum care.
Dr. Parker Duncan Diaz, the medical director at the Santa Rosa Community Health Center's Lombardi campus, spoke of a pregnant patient who thought she was perfectly healthy but actually had dangerously high blood pressure.
She would have to deliver her baby early, at 38 weeks, to prevent the possibility of eclampsia, which can cause seizures, he said.
"By having access to prenatal care, we not only saved a medical disaster, we probably saved two lives," he said. "This is what we all trained for, this is the purpose of our healthcare, to diagnose and treat things early, before they become disastrous, before they wind up in the emergency room and cost us even more to our system, and, ultimately, to our taxpayers," he said.
Dr. Ginger Schechter, who retired as chief medical officer at the Santa Rosa VA Clinic, said veterans with specialized medical needs would suffer, which would impact the community's healthcare system overall.
"Less benefits for veterans, or lack of staff to care for them, will put a burden on our local systems that are often already busy, in need of more staff," Schechter said.
The Republican budget plan calls for extending temporary tax cuts passed in 2017 through 2034, which would add about $4.2 trillion to the federal deficit, according to the U.S. Treasury's Office of Tax Analysis.
To avoid a government shutdown, a spending bill with more detailed cuts must be passed by March 14 unless another temporary spending bill, known as a continuing resolution, is passed.
