Dear Representative:
On behalf of the AFL-CIO, I urge you to oppose the reconciliation provisions pursuant to H.Con.Res. 14 that will be considered in the Energy and Commerce Committee this week. The health care provisions in this legislation will severely harm working families by cutting $715 billion from health benefits that people enrolled in Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) depend on.
The reconciliation package’s massive Medicaid cuts and failure to extend improved ACA premium credits will result in 13.7 million people becoming uninsured. New mothers will face crippling debt, lacking coverage for childbirth. Children will be unable to go to doctor’s visits or have hospital care covered. People fighting opioid use disorder will have to go it alone as programs close. The closure of hospitals and nursing homes will leave thousands of seniors without access to care. Hundreds of thousands of health care workers will lose their jobs. States will face tremendous new costs as they lose federal revenue, leading to fewer resources for priorities like education, transportation, and public safety.
A number of egregious policies in this legislation will impact America's working people. With respect to health care, they include:
● Blocking safe staffing standards for nursing homes. Nursing homes will be understaffed – undermining patient care, increasing mortality, and pushing skilled staff out of the care workforce.
● Restricting seniors’ access to long-term care services. The legislation will make it difficult for seniors in areas with high housing costs to qualify for Medicaid to pay for in-home or nursing home care.
● Medicaid work requirements – red tape to prevent enrollment. By imposing red tape work requirements, the legislation will deny millions of people the Medicaid coverage they need to keep them healthy as they hold down job, parenting, and family caregiving responsibilities. The human costs of this policy far outweigh the putative policy goal of encouraging more work. KFF recently found that enrollees subject to this type of work requirement already have jobs or face serious circumstances -- “92% were working full or part-time (64%), or not working due to caregiving responsibilities, illness or disability, or school attendance.” The point of this policy is to kick people off of coverage, not to “reduce waste” or encourage employment.
● Erecting enrollment barriers for people who depend on Medicare, the ACA, and CHIP. Numerous provisions restrict enrollment periods and add burdensome paperwork requirements to discourage people from accessing health care.
● Penalizing states that cover immigrant families with their own funding. States that provide immigrant families Medicaid coverage funded 100% by the state will be penalized through billions in dollars of cuts in federal funding for their ACA expansion populations.
● Restricting states’ flexibility in formulating their Medicaid match. By prohibiting states from employing new taxes on health providers to make their match, their ability to address the shortfall in federal Medicaid funding will be severely hampered. The legislation also restricts other longstanding financing arrangements used by the states.
It is unconscionable that these provisions which cause enormous harm to working families will be used to offset nearly $4 trillion in tax cuts that will largely benefit the rich and large corporations. We expect every member of this committee to reject these policies.
Sincerely,
Jody Calemine
Director, Government Affairs