To the editor:

Let’s not cut Medicaid to gift money to billionaires. In our NY-21 congressional district, Medicaid covers 92,000 children — over one third, as well as 4,300 pregnant moms each year. New York kids on Medicaid/CHIP get free vaccines. They aren’t dying of measles or paralyzed by polio, diseases the U.S. wiped out decades ago.

Medicaid cuts would also risk the health of 27,000 seniors in NY-21, including 2,394 in nursing homes. Loss of that safety network can ricochet through communities. Who will provide Grandpa’s care?

The House budget plan would take Medicaid away from 69,000 adults in our district who enrolled after the Affordable Care Act (ACA) expanded Medicaid. My sibling is self-employed and had no health insurance for years while working full-time. Luckily, ACA’s Medicaid expansion arrived before cancer. That means a child grows up with two parents, not one.

Many parents in the North Country work two or three jobs and still barely afford rent, food and gas. Cuts in the House budget plan would hurt 117,000 people in NY-21 who count on SNAP to put food on the table. Plus 10,000 of our neighbors in ACA plans would be hit with $1900/year higher premiums.

Medicaid is a key economic driver in rural areas. In Clinton, Essex and Franklin Counties, Medicaid spent $100 million, $90 million and $48 million on inpatient hospital care back in 2019. We need our rural hospitals for the many people they employ and for all of us they serve. Yet hospitals struggle to stay afloat. Dropping families from Medicaid means people skip prevention, show up at the ER, and are saddled with more debt — and hospitals are paid late or not at all.

Protect hard-working families, elders, and our Adirondack communities. Ask Representative Elise Stefanik to vote NO on a budget that cuts Medicaid: call 202-225-4611.

Alison King

Vermontville