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Sabrina Bishop, a California home care worker, and her disabled patient, Ronald Penn, traveled to Washington, D.C., last week to warn lawmakers about the impact that Donald Trump and Republicans’ tax bill, which would massively cut Medicaid, will have on Americans who rely on home health care services.
“We’re really trying to get them to understand that this is about saving human lives, but they want to focus on giving these billionaires and corporations tax breaks who don’t even need it,” Bishop tells Rolling Stone. “I can’t believe that there’s people out there who would actually entertain taking away care for people who need care,” says Penn, a veteran and retired hospice care worker, calling the idea “absolutely criminal.”
Last week, Republicans in the House of Representatives passed legislation to extend and expand Trump’s 2017 tax law, which disproportionately benefited the wealthy and big corporations. Their latest tax legislation would similarly benefit the wealthy — and it would pay for those tax cuts, in part, with huge cuts to Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans.
At least 10 million Americans are expected to lose Medicaid as a result of measures in the tax bill. The legislation will also limit “provider taxes,” which states use to provide supplemental payments to hospitals, doctors, and other health care providers. The bill would additionally impose a financial penalty on states that offer health coverage to undocumented immigrants. For California, this would mean a $30 billion reduction in federal funding by 2034. Taken together, these changes could greatly impact available funding for home health care workers like Bishop.
The idea of cutting Medicaid is wildly unpopular, according to numerous polls. One recent survey, commissioned by the Committee to Protect Healthcare, an advocacy group for doctors and health care advocates, found that 62 percent of respondents oppose cutting Medicaid, compared to only 22 percent who support doing so. The group found that messages attacking GOP House candidates on Medicaid cuts shifted voter opinions by as much as 3.4 percent against Republicans.
Penn and Bishop, a member of AFSCME Local 3930/United Domestic Workers, met with several California lawmakers and congressional offices in Washington last week to warn about the impact that the Medicaid cuts will have on home health care workers and their patients.
Noting that Republicans are calling this legislation “a big, beautiful deal,” Bishop says, in reality, the legislation is “going to cut the medical lifeline off for millions of human beings, millions of people.” She adds, “Millions of lives will be lost.”
Bishop, 59, assists disabled patients, seniors, and others who cannot care for themselves — helping them with “cooking, cleaning, running errands, medication management” — so they can “stay in their own home, versus being put in an institution where their quality of life could be diminished.”
Penn, 61, lost his eyesight and his legs due to illness. “I’m financially OK, but I can’t care for myself the way I’m used to,” he says. “I can’t drive. I can’t cook.”
“That’s where Sabrina comes in,” he says. “Without my personal caregiver — and not just her, but others that work alongside her — it would grossly impact my life. I would end up in a state, county-run facility. … My livelihood would be greatly diminished, and it would cost the state and cost the federal government more money to put me in these types of places, where I wouldn’t be able to come and go as I please, I wouldn’t be able to thrive. I wouldn’t be able to have the life that I so honestly and richly deserve — that I earned.”
Bishop and Penn met with Democratic Rep. Juan Vargas, their representative, and staffers for California freshman Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff. They also met with an aide for Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley.
They say the meeting with the Kiley staffer did not go well.
“I tried to reach out to him and try to appeal to his heart,” says Penn, adding that he tried to explain that it would “cost less money to get the systems working properly and effectively” than it will if Republicans slash Medicaid.
He says Kiley’s aide started reciting talking points about undocumented immigrants taking advantage of the Medicaid system. This has become a key plank in Republicans’ messaging efforts to defend their tax bill, despite it being false. Undocumented immigrants are ineligible for Medicaid. Democrats have pointed out that, of the millions of Americans who are expected to lose their health insurance coverage as a result of Republicans’ Medicaid cuts, precisely none of them are undocumented.
“That’s not the real problem,” says Bishop, adding that Republicans are merely looking for a way to give more tax breaks to the wealthy. “If we could get them to pay their taxes, we could have a better program.”
