By Edna Beebe, Home Care Worker, Eek, Alaska
Medicaid covers long-term care for the elderly and people with disabilities. Did you know this?
I know this. My mother depends on Medicaid to receive home care so she can live the rest of her life in dignity at home. Medicaid is how she’s been able to stay in Eek, a remote village with 350 people in Southern Alaska, where there are no roads to get to the medical appointments she needs to stay alive and healthy.
Through Medicaid, we can travel by air: two $100+ flights and an overnight stay to make logistics work.
Having no Medicaid would be life-threatening for her and so many working people like her. It’s why I fought hard to tell Congress: Stop in your tracks, don't gut Medicaid to fund tax breaks for the wealthy.
Many Americans think of Medicaid as a healthcare program. But it’s so much more, it’s a lifeline for the 80 million people who rely on it—that’s 1 in 5 Americans, and 14 million of those working people are in rural areas like my mom and me.
Besides home and community-based care, as well as transportation services, Medicaid is a job creator. It’s infrastructure funding, disability assistance, mental health care, veteran support, schools and special education, hospitals, it’s LIFE. Even if you aren’t on Medicaid directly, your life is indirectly made better thanks to Medicaid services.
Yet in July, Congress passed the Big Ugly Bill, a nearly $4.5 trillion heist, robbing hospitals and clinics (many rural) of Medicaid funding and stealing Medicaid from 16 million adults and children.
Earlier this year, I took four flights to Washington, D.C. to speak to my representatives about protecting Medicaid.
Now I'm asking you to stay in this fight.
Participate on Saturday July 26 in a protest near you, to demand that the Bill be reversed.
