Fifteen years.
That’s how long Hialeah’s Unince Hernandez, 78, and her 43-year-old son David, a quadriplegic with muscular dystrophy, have relied on Medicaid for their basic healthcare necessities and had to navigate the program’s dwindling resources.
“The portable suction machine for David’s tracheostomy . . . I now have to buy,” said Hernandez about the medical equipment that helps clear Leal’s throat of mucus and breathe. “They’re supposed to give me a machine every two years, but now they’re not giving it out.”
A joint state and federal health insurance program, Medicaid provides coverage for qualifying candidates like the Hernandez family, including low-income individuals and families, children, pregnant women, the elderly and those with disabilities.
However, a new House Republican budget blueprint could put a further strain on the mother-son duo’s already limited benefits.
Released on February 25, the proposal calls for a $2 trillion reduction in federal spending over the next decade to achieve $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.
One of its big-ticket items? Requiring the House Committee of Energy and Commerce, which oversees healthcare programs like Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act, to make $880 billion worth of spending cuts.
Though the plan doesn’t detail what programs the committee would have to strip or forgo, Florida Policy Institute’s Holly Bullard has a hard time believing that the healthcare funds of South Floridians will remain untouched.
“Energy and Commerce oversees Medicaid and Medicare and very little else,” said the organization’s chief strategy and development officer. “So when you’re talking about almost a trillion dollars of cuts, that is eight-fold the state of Florida’s budget. The scale of these cuts is more than any other reconciliation package has had.”
Roughly 4.2 million Floridians are enrolled in Medicaid, with over 720,000 being Miami-Dade residents. The program is a medical lifeline for the area’s most vulnerable communities, insuring over 40% of kids, more than half of the senior population, and over 50,000 people with disability under 65 in the county, reports the Miami Herald.
According to KFF, a nonpartisan organization that provides health policy research, it represents almost $1 out of $5 spent on healthcare nationwide.
But beyond hurting the wallets of South Florida residents, the University of Miami’s Dr. Olveen Carrasquillo warns that the real impact will be felt in the community’s health.
“[For example], people with diabetes . . . medications, some are cheap, but some, like insulin, cost money,” said Carrasquillo, a physician whose research focuses on health policy and minority disparities in healthcare access. “I already see, when I work in the inpatient, we admit all these people with preventable stuff. If you cut services, you’re gonna make those problems much worse, and that’s what scares me.”
Bullard and Carrasquillo remind both beneficiaries and concerned South Floridians that while the future of these federally funded healthcare programs looks uncertain, there’s still time to push for change.
With the Senate passing its budget proposal on February 21, both chambers will now try to agree on a common resolution by April 15, when it must present a finalized congressional budget before the fiscal year begins on Oct. 1.
That’s why Hernandez hopes that her local legislators will acknowledge the needs of and advocate on behalf of beneficiaries like her son before it’s too late.
“What they have to do is look into it properly,” she said. “Figure things out with those who are truly in need, because they exist.”
