MANKATO — For Jason Bennett, Rachel Bendickson and Christine Myers, three working parents of children with disabilities in the Mankato area, potential Medicaid cuts are anxiety inducing.
The three shared how integral the federal funding is for their families at a roundtable discussion with state, local and health officials Friday. Organized by state officials, it was the fifth in a series of panels highlighting the impact of Medicaid.
Medicaid is the only reason Bennett and his wife can work, he said, because if not for it they’d be caring for their daughter, Ashlyn, around the clock.
“Because of Medicaid we can hire people to help care for her,” he said.
Ashlyn has Rett syndrome, requiring 24/7 monitoring. There’s a perception of Medicaid recipients being “takers” who don’t work, Bennett said, but the funds actually keep him and his wife in the workforce.
“I’m not a nurse; I’m not a doctor, and I don’t want to be Ashlyn’s nurse or Ashlyn’s doctor,” he said. “I want to be her dad, and the only way right now that we can ensure that is through the assistance we get through Medicaid.”
Friday’s panel came as the Republican-controlled U.S. House approved a blueprint Thursday which could lead to $880 billion in Medicaid cuts over 10 years, said Jeremy Drucker, the state’s director of the Office of Addiction and Recovery. He facilitated the discussion at Gillette Children’s, located at Mankato Clinic’s Children’s Health Center.
If the cuts go through, Drucker said a state analysis found Minnesota would lose $1.6 billion in funding per year, impacting benefits received by 1.3 million residents.
Cuts at this scale would not only strain the health system, said Dr. Micah Niermann, chief medical officer at Gillette Children’s, they’d put lives at risk.
“As a physician my first ethical obligation is to first do no harm,” he said. “Medicaid cuts will cause harm, deep and irreversible.”
Cuts would be devastating to the health care system, said Dr. Susan Klenk of Mankato Clinic, a family physician for 26 years. Insurance premiums would go up and hospitals and clinics would close, as Medicaid accounts for a sizable percentage of their funds.
“If you cut that drastically, it’s just not sustainable,” she said. “I’m hoping that people realize how important this is.”
U.S. Rep. Brad Finstad, R-New Ulm, voted for Thursday’s budget resolution. On his Facebook page he stated it set the table for “compassionate improvements to Medicare, Medicaid, & Social Security.”
“We can and will protect benefits for the most vulnerable among us while also rooting out the waste, fraud, and abuse,” he stated.
The $880 billion number comes from a proposed plan directing the House Energy and Commerce Committee to cut the deficit by at least that amount over the next decade, according to a KFF Health News report in March. The committee has domain over Medicaid, Medicare, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
If cuts to Medicare, a highly popular health insurance program for seniors, were to be ruled out, a Congressional Budget Office analysis found Medicaid cuts would need to account for the majority of cost savings.
As Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, put it, the only way to achieve $880 billion in savings would be through large Medicaid cuts.
Bendickson, a mother of four, has a son, Cruz, 11, with intellectual disabilities. Medicaid keeps her family whole with him at home rather than needing care elsewhere.
“Medicaid is crucial in our lives,” he said.
It also helps cover medications for the family, a huge help.
Medical Assistance, which is Minnesota’s Medicaid program, opened opportunities for Myers to go to school, get her degree and work her way off of public assistance programs as a mother of four. Two of her children, now adults, have severe, persistent mental illnesses.
Medicaid funds get them treatments and waiver services only available through the program. Her son has a nurse checking on him weekly, helping him with medications. Her daughter has an Adult Rehabilitative Mental Health Services, or ARMHS, worker helping her.
Myers would’ve needed to quit her job if not for these services.
“I’d need to be at home to care for them,” she said. “Medical Assistance has not only saved their lives, but it’s also moved them closer to the possibility of employment, and it’s allowed me to continue working.”
Minnesota’s Medicaid director John Connolly, MNsure CEO Libby Caulum and Minnesota Department of Commerce commissioner Grace Arnold spoke about further negative impacts on Minnesota if cuts go through. Health insurance premium rises, worsened health care access gaps in Greater Minnesota, and the snowball effect that cuts to one source of funding would have on the system were among the examples.
Blue Earth County’s human services director, Phil Claussen, talked about how “one-dimensional cuts” don’t have a history of working. Cuts lead to more cuts, he said, leading to the system going into survival mode where innovation dies.
The three parents at Friday’s panel are more the rule than the exception when it comes to Medicaid usage, Drucker said. More events are planned around the state to highlight it.
“We hope everyone pays attention, gets plugged in and is aware of what’s at stake as these conversations in Washington D.C. take place,” Drucker said.
Toward the end of the discussion Bennett said he thinks about what cuts would say about our society. A society and country should be judged by how it treats its children, people with disabilities and its older residents, all major recipients of Medicaid.
“If we’re going to cut that safety net, what does that say about us as a society?” he asked. “That we’re valuing the dollar over people?”
Medicaid dollars in his case are crucial to his daughter’s livelihood, he added.
Follow Brian Arola @BrianArola