To the Editor:
Seventy-three percent of nursing home residents in NY are covered by Medicaid. Forty-three percent of children in NY are covered by Medicaid. But the steal is on to cut Medicaid and Medicare and other essential programs that help children, the elderly, and working families in order to fund one trillion dollars in tax cuts for billionaires. My own mother was one of those elderly people. Widowed at a young age, she worked her whole life and still qualified for Medicaid to help pay for her health care in her elderhood.
In Cortland County cuts to Medicaid would affect over 12,000 people, more than 26% of the population. Over 8,000 people, more than 18% of the population receive Medicare. The direct economic impact on our county from these cuts would be sizeable.
It isn’t just people on Medicaid and Medicare that will feel the impact. As nursing homes empty out, because people can’t pay for care, families will need to care for their elderly family members at home. Nursing homes will close, and health care employees will be laid off. Rural hospitals will be negatively impacted. In a time, when health care professionals are already in short supply, more will be laid off and health care will be harder to access for everyone.
And while those in the top 5% of income will receive tax breaks, the rest of us will see an increase in taxes. Decreased services, more taxes on working families, and devastated local economies is too high a price to pay to make the rich richer.
We can stop the steal though. Call your representatives and demand that they support children, families, and the elderly in our communities rather than passing a trillion dollars of our money to the billionaires of this country.
Priscilla Berggren-Thomas
Homer
