[Nfbc-info] Fwd: [Nfbnet-members-list] Legislative Alert - Medicaid - 6/28/2017

[Shannon Dillon]

Good afternoon Fellow Federationists,

Please see the below message from John Pare concerning legislative
action we need to take regarding Medicaid.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Pare, John via NFBNet-Members-List" <nfbnet-members-list at nfbnet.org>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2017 17:39:48 -0500
Subject: [Nfbnet-members-list] Legislative Alert - Medicaid - 6/28/2017
To: nfbnet-members-list at nfbnet.org


Dear Fellow Federationists:

I know you have already been busy contacting your
representatives and senators about our
legislative issues, but I want to add one more
item to the list of topics you should discuss
with them. I am sure you are aware of the debate
that is currently taking place regarding our
nation’s healthcare system. The House has voted
on its proposal, called the American Health Care
Act,  but the Senate has not yet done so. A vote
was scheduled for this week, but it was announced
yesterday afternoon that it would be postponed. A
vote on the Senate healthcare proposal, the
Better Care Reconciliation act, will take place
following the July 4 legislative recess.

The healthcare proposals currently being
considered would devastate the Medicaid program,
upon which thousands of blind people rely to meet
their healthcare needs. Since we now have the
opportunity to speak to our senators while they
are in their districts over the July 4 recess,
prior to them voting on the Better Care
Reconciliation Act, we should urge them to vote
against any cuts to Medicaid and to protect the
blind Americans who depend on this program.

President Riccobono wrote an excellent op-ed
about this issue, which was published in The Hill
recently. At press time, the details of the
Better Care Reconciliation Act were not known, so
the piece only specifically mentions the House’s
American Healthcare Act and the budget that has
been proposed by the White House. However, we now
know that the Medicaid cuts proposed in the
Senate bill are every bit as bad as those
proposed in the House bill and the
administration’s proposed budget. Please read
President Riccobono’s  op-ed for a thorough
explanation of the devastating impact these
proposed cuts would have. It is pasted below for
your convenience. Then call or email your
senators and tell them to vote against Medicaid cuts.

The best way to contact your member of Congress
is to call the Capitol Switchboard at (202)
224-3121 and ask for the office in question.
Emailing your member of Congress is also a good
idea. If you do so, please copy <mailto:JPare at nfb.org>JPare at nfb.org.

Saving Medicaid is critical to America’s blind
Mark A. Riccobono
The Hill – 6/23/2017

For more than fifty years Medicaid has provided
much-needed security and stability to some of
America’s most disempowered people. Especially
for people with disabilities, Medicaid has been
and remains an essential lifeline. That lifeline
is under attack in the form of Draconian cuts
proposed by both the American Health Care Act
(AHCA) and the current administration’s proposed
budget. These cuts would, without exaggeration, upend millions of lives.

One community in particular – the blind – would
be disproportionately and negatively affected if
the more than $1 trillion in proposed Medicaid
cuts came to fruition. According to an analysis
of the cuts, upwards of seven hundred thousand
people with disabilities would lose access to
health insurance as a result of cuts to Medicaid.
Based on the ratio of blind people currently
using Medicaid relative to the total population
of disabled people using Medicaid, more than one
hundred thousand blind people would lose
insurance, making these proposed cuts a potential
catastrophe for blind people everywhere.

The National Federation of the Blind, the oldest
and largest nationwide organization of blind
people in the United States, strongly and
unequivocally opposes cuts to Medicaid. These
proposed cuts would undermine the security,
stability, and prosperity of more than one
hundred thousand blind people in this country.
This is an untenable prospect and we categorically reject it.
Whether it is a poverty rate twice the national
average or an employment rate less than half the
national level, the blind already face
significant challenges in attaining the American
dream. To strip health insurance from so many
blind people would serve only to erect additional
barriers and obstacles to our efforts to achieve
that dream. Blind households would suddenly face
drastically higher costs and strained budgets,
exacerbating the preexisting challenges of high poverty and low employment.

Medicaid, which provides insurance to an
estimated 1.4 million blind people, is a vital
component of our continuing effort to promote
opportunity and prosperity in our community. We
thus call upon members of the United States
Senate to oppose any bill that proposes cuts to
Medicaid of the type contained in the AHCA and
the current administration’s budget. We
especially call upon the senators from the eleven
states in which at least 40 percent of people
with disabilities rely on Medicaid for health
insurance to vote no on any legislation that
would imperil the economic stability and family
security of their blind constituents. Namely,
senators from the states of California,
Connecticut, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts,
Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island,
Vermont, and West Virginia should join us in
opposing any cuts to Medicaid. To vote in favor
of such cuts would be to resign tens of thousands
of blind people to a life of economic uncertainty and hardship.

When President Lyndon B. Johnson and former
President Harry S. Truman stood alongside each
other to commemorate the passage of the Social
Security Amendments Act of 1965, the legislation
that established both Medicare and Medicaid, it
was clear that something historic and
revolutionary had just happened. By extending
access to health insurance to those who may not
have access to it otherwise, Congress codified
the idea that health insurance is an
indispensable element of economic security and
made it a reality. As a result, since 1965,
millions of blind Americans have been able to
live more stable and productive lives. To
fundamentally undermine the Medicaid program
would be to substantially roll back much of that
progress. We sincerely hope that the Congress of
today, and the Senate will not dishonor the
legacy of its forbearers and in doing so, make it
harder for we in the blind community to live the kind of lives we want.

<http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/339073-saving-medicaid-is-critical-to-americas-blind?rnd=1498230931>http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/339073-saving-medicaid-is-critical-to-americas-blind?rnd=1498230931

John Paré
(410) 659-9314 x 2218
National Federation of the Blind





-- 
SHANNON L. DILLON