‘This is not a luxury’: Families in Trump states agonize over GOP’s proposed Medicaid cuts

Courtney Leader has been closely following the contentious tax-and-spending debate in Washington – not that she cares much for politics, but because she believes the proposed Medicaid cuts are a matter of life or death for her daughter.

Courtney Leader has been closely following the contentious tax-and-spending debate in Washington – not that she cares much for politics, but because she believes the proposed Medicaid cuts are a matter of life or death for her daughter. “This is not a luxury. I do not have my daughter enrolled on Medicaid so we can have fancy things,” Leader said. “I have my daughter enrolled in Medicaid so we can keep her alive and keep her at home, which I think is the best option for her.” As the Senate grinds closer to a vote on a Republican bill containing President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda, the real-world implications are playing out across the country at kitchen tables of parents like Leader, whose 9-year-old daughter with brain damage and cerebral palsy relies on Medicaid benefits for daily care and weekly therapy. She wrote to Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, hoping to put a face on the Medicaid debate. She explained that her husband works as a carpenter, whose private insurance provides health coverage for the couple and their four other children. She said costly medical bills for their daughter, Cyrina, were too much for any household to bear. “Without Medicaid,” Leader told her senator, “we would lose everything – our home, our vehicles and, eventually, our daughter.” Hawley did not identify Leader by name, but he shared her family’s story in a New York Times essay last month as he first emerged as a rare Republican warning his party against cutting Medicaid for some of the 70 million low-income and disabled Americans who rely on the program. He called such a move “morally wrong and politically suicidal,” and has pushed for proposed changes to the bill to avoid what he believes would be a devastating blow to rural hospitals.