On Staten Island As In the Bronx: Cuts To Medicaid, SNAP, Will Harm Low-Income Seniors, Children, Individuals With Disabilities

Staten Islander News sat down with Paula Arboleda of Legal Services NYC to discuss the pending cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP. These three programs are relied on by many low-income people, particularly those who are employed.

We learned where the money comes from for the Healthcare programs, which is from both the state and federal government. Medicare, in particular, is funded at least in part by Deductions from everyone’s paychecks across the state. Medicaid is funded by the federal government itself.

According to Social Security’s website: “The Medicare portion of FICA is 1.45% for wages up to 200,000 and 2.35% for wages above $200,000. There is no cap on wages for the Medicare portion of FICA.”

So an individual who, for example, worked at a wage of $12 per hour full time (40 hours a week)  would have a total annual salary of $24,960. Over the course of 40 years of a working life (between 20 years old and 65), that individual would pay $16,286 into Medicare alone.

We also discussed what they are planning to cut. We talked about how physician practices and hospitals could get a pay cut. So instead of paying the previous price for a service, a lower percentage is paid. This means that while everyone needs raises and the cost of living is increasing, these health care related practices have to take a pay cut.

For SNAP, the federal government may pay less to the states for administering that program as well. So instead of paying 50% for administrative costs, now they’ll pay 35%. For some states, this cost can be more easily absorbed. However, even New York is likely to do something to offset this cost, and it’s most likely to hurt the user.

Maybe they’ll tighten up the eligibility requirements so fewer people qualify to apply. Maybe they’ll reduce the allowed resources or income. Maybe they’ll change the plans, so no more dental care, vision care, or maybe home care hours. This will directly affect the most vulnerable and least able to fight back among the population.

We also talked about the automatic Medicare renewals, in place since COVID, which are now ending. People who were formerly enrolled are now being mailed a reapplication packet which must be returned for the benefits to continue.

Here in NYC, if these cuts are passed, we may not see any real difference. New York is among the wealthier states in the union, and can even be said to carry the more rural less populous states. Those same states, such as Kansas, Kentucky, and other Appalachian states use more SNAP and Medicare benefits than other states. They also have lower income overall, and are likely to be the most heavily affected.

Advertisement

As Paula said, more people will go hungry, and more will die from losing their benefits. These benefits are crucial, and they allow lower income Americans to survive and, in some case, even thrive despite their circumstances.

Something else that she mentioned is that most of the recipients do work full time. But they work at minimum wage for large corporations who don’t pay them enough to not qualify for food stamps or health insurance. Consequently, the government is subsiding such giant companies to allow them to continue to under pay their workers, since they can just get benefits to make ends meet. Meanwhile they work full time and remain in a cycle of poverty.

With regard to cuts to Medicaid, Representative AOC was interviewed recently by Rolling Stone magazine.  She said the following in response to two questions specifically regarding Medicaid cuts: 

“You have been fighting against Republican cuts to Medicaid. Can you talk about how these cuts will affect people?”

“Medicaid is one of the largest insurers in the United States of America. One in five people get their insurance in whole or part or in part from Medicaid, and that’s before we even talk about Medicare. 

If you buy your insurance off of a health exchange, even if you’re buying a private health insurance plan off of an Obamacare or state exchange, you will be affected, because Medicaid expansion affects ACA coverage. 

Medicaid expansion affects people with disabilities, people who are looking for work, whose job doesn’t cover health insurance, whose job doesn’t pay enough for them to have health insurance. Out of every 10 babies born today, four of [those births] will be covered by Medicaid. 

We are talking about a massive devastation of our social safety net. And for all of this conversation that Republicans talk about with [Medicaid work requirements for] quote-unquote, able-bodied men — they are very literal in that —people with mental health issues, I think they would consider them able-bodied. We are talking about one of the biggest revocations of health insurance and health care in the United States of America. It is tremendously dangerous.”

“Why do you think Republicans are pushing for this? Who benefits from it?” 

“The whole reason we’re here is [because] they’re talking about waste, fraud, and abuse. I’ve been sitting through a lot of these debates. The only time the Republicans brought up a number of alleged waste, fraud, and abuse is $50 billion. Even if you believe them, then why did they put $850 billion as the number for their cuts? Where’s that other $800 billion coming from if you said the waste-fraud-abuse number was $50 billion? And the reason for that is because this is not a health-care-cut bill. This is a bill where they have an assignment — they are trying to give trillions of dollars in collective tax cuts to billionaires, and they have to pay for it. And so the thing that they have identified to pay for it is one of the largest areas of expenditures in the United States, which is health care.”

Banner Image: Video cover. Image Credit – Staten Islander News and Legal Services NYC