May 22, 2025
The situation is dire.
Early this morning, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act – the budget bill that includes a sweeping proposal that slashes billions of dollars from the Medicaid program and imposes dangerous new work requirements for Medicaid. If this is enacted, the bill will strip health insurance – and health care – away from millions of low-income people across the country.
Of course, the House barely passed this bill with enough votes, but all the YES votes were by Republicans. Let’s be very clear: this is one-sided, one party bill. There is no bipartisanship here.
CCHCC strongly condemns this legislation, which prioritizes tax breaks for billionaires and the largest corporations over the health and dignity of low-income communities. The deep cuts to Medicaid included in this bill will result in fewer people being covered, fewer healthcare services available and accessible, and a weaker healthcare system for everyone.
There is nothing beautiful about this bill. There is nothing beautiful about cruelty. There is nothing beautiful about the massive wealth transfer that is the primary purpose of this bill – but it’s a wealth transfer from the poorest to the wealthiest in our nation. There is absolutely no reason to make the tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans permanent. How much more do they need? This is just the most malevolent form of greed and avarice at the expense of people’s health, and possibly their lives.
One of the most harmful provisions in this bill is a national mandate for Medicaid work requirements. Bureaucratic barriers like work requirements do NOT promote employment. In fact, 93% of all people on Medicaid who can work, are working! These requirements punish people who are already working in low-wage jobs, or who have disabilities, chronic conditions, or caregiving responsibilities. Caps to state Medicaid taxes and other changes to the program will result in slashing billions of more dollars to states and these will force states to make difficult decisions on who gets care and what care and services are available. Work requirements for Medicaid will costs all the states millions of dollars as they will have to set up the infrastructure to manage these requirements, and they will have to hire more people to do the work of monitoring Medicaid beneficiaries. What an absolutely ridiculous use of money!
There are other harmful provisions that undermine protections helping individuals obtain and retain Medicaid and Marketplace coverage. These provisions prevent states from spending their own funds to provide health insurance to immigrants, for example. Insuring as much of the population as possible improves a community’s and a state’s health overall, and decreases public health crises because health issues – including from infectious diseases – can be prevented, detected early, and treated early, limiting the spread of communicable diseases. So much for states’ rights.
In my 28+ years at CCHCC, I have never been more scared about the potential for a devastating change to health policy. If these policy changes go through, some people will literally lose their lives, as they used to before the Affordable Care Act greatly expanded access to health insurance via the Marketplace and expanded Medicaid. In those bad old days, we literally had clients who lost their lives because they were unable to get timely care due to being uninsured or uninsurable.
I have never forgotten these clients and I am haunted by their tragedies. One woman (younger than I am now) literally died on the operating table because she was unable to get cardiac rehab following a massive heart attack and bypass surgeries. She did not get check-ups or rehab because she lost her health insurance after she lost her job as a result of her heart attack. She started to decline. She felt she could not go to the hospital because she didn’t have health insurance and she was terrified of another hospital bill that she would not be able to pay. Her husband called in anguish. I pleaded for him to get her to the ER immediately, no matter what. He did so, but it was too late. Too much damage had taken place and she died on the operating table.
I will never forget his phone call to me afterwards. Never. It was tragic because it was preventable. She should still be here. He should not be a widower.
Another client of mine also died on the operating table when she bled to death as a result of massive fibroids that should have been removed years earlier, but she had no health insurance to afford the surgeries she needed.
These situations haunt me and they are never far from my mind. Today, they are front and center, and I’m afraid for our community and our nation. This is what we will return to if this hideous mean-spirited budget passes.
Make no mistake about this: There is NO reasonable health policy behind the changes that they are trying to enact. The reason they are doing what they are doing – with work requirements and proposing block grants – is to create the illusion that these are NOT budget cuts to these programs. But everyone who works in health policy knows that these ARE, in fact, budget cuts to the Medicaid program – just by another name. Refusing to discuss these policy changes as budget cuts is part of a campaign of disinformation, and the legislators advancing this budget bill just hope that you will not notice.
These ARE budget cuts. And all for what? So Republicans can deliver a massive wealth transfer to rich people who already do NOT pay their fair share in taxes like all the rest of us do, at the expense of lower income people.
What kind of policy is this? This is the kind of policy that moves our nation toward becoming a plutocracy, where the government serves the interests of the very wealthy, only. There is no other policy justification for this.
We have to fight as if our lives or the lives of our loved ones depend on us. Because they do.
One way you can help: You can join the efforts of the IL Protect Our Care Network, so that you can take part in phone banking, calling legislators, signing petitions, and taking other such actions. To join the network and get active, you can complete a simple form here.
What’s next? The U.S. House and Senate will have to work through a budget reconciliation process in order to finalize a budget bill that will then go to Trump for his signature. Remember that they are trying to get this done by Monday, May 26 – Memorial Day.
Please stay tuned to CCHCC emails for more updates and opportunities to take action.
And thank you for your activism!
Let’s keep up the fight!
Sincerely,
Claudia Lennhoff
Executive Director
Champaign County Health Care Consumers