In right now’s dystopia, on the similar time Republicans passed legislation to lower practically $1 trillion in funding from Medicaid — a well being care program that enables low-income and disabled youngsters and adults to get the well being care they want — first woman Melania Trump was photographed visiting Youngsters’s Nationwide Hospital in Washington, D.C., to spend time with sick youngsters, according to USA Today.
On a day mother and father, caretakers, medical doctors and nurses apprehensive greater than ever about the way forward for well being care protection, she visited a hospital that cares for infants and kids via Medicaid (amongst different kinds of medical insurance).
At Youngsters’s Nationwide, the primary woman talked with the children, introduced items, did Fourth of July crafts with them and adorned the hospital backyard.
On another day, this go to can be… nice, however the timing is questionable at greatest — and merciless at worst — because the so-called Huge Lovely Invoice which is predicted to take away health care coverage from upwards of 12 million people, makes its technique to President Donald Trump’s desk for him to signal into legislation.
According to reporting from The 19th, $1 trillion {dollars} shall be lower from Medicaid and the Youngsters’s Well being Insurance coverage Program as a part of the invoice.
Whereas every program has totally different eligibility necessities and protection areas, they typically cowl well being care prices for low-income adults and kids, disabled adults and kids, and others with restricted assets.
Medicaid is a literal lifeline for tens of millions of children. Roughly 37 million children presently get their well being care via Medicaid or CHIP, and Medicaid is “the one largest healthcare insurer for kids,” the Youngsters’s Hospital of Philadelphia states on its website.
Medicaid and CHIP cowl preventive health care for infants and children to allow them to keep effectively and obtain vaccinations, physicals and routine dental care. These well being care packages are additionally there to cowl prices when one thing goes mistaken (1 in 3 children with most cancers are coated by Medicaid).
Medicaid additionally covers well being take care of 99% of children in foster care and offers medical insurance for 80% of children in poverty.
Andrew Harnik by way of Getty Pictures
Past taking away Medicaid from tens of millions, the well being care cuts within the “huge, stunning invoice” are anticipated to influence particular person hospitals — notably in rural areas — that now could face closures as they cope with monetary points because of the lack of Medicaid funding. So, the place will the children who want care in these areas go, whether or not they’re on Medicaid or not?
Whereas work necessities for nondisabled adults are on the middle of the Medicaid adjustments, plenty of people are worried about what the funding cuts imply for the future of their children’s health. And the way might they not?
Price range cuts to well being care packages which are in place to maintain youngsters and their households wholesome actually aren’t going to “Make America Wholesome Once more,” the purported purpose of Well being and Human Companies Secretary Robert F. Kennedy and Donald Trump.
And making a distraction, by means of a hospital go to, from 1 trillion {dollars} of well being care cuts additionally isn’t going to “Make America Wholesome Once more.”
It’d be good to suppose that the primary woman’s go to to Youngsters’s Nationwide Hospital wasn’t deliberately merciless, particularly as tens of millions of Individuals fear about paying for his or her future physician’s visits. (Hey, maybe, like her husband, she didn’t understand there have been Medicaid cuts within the invoice.) However with a track record of wearing a jacket imprinted with “I actually don’t care, do u?” it’s exhausting to provide her the advantage of the doubt.
