Medicaid on the Chopping Block: Advocacy Updates

Amber Christ: Hi everyone and welcome to today’s webinar, Medicaid on the Chopping Block: Advocacy Updates. My name is Amber Christ. I use she, her pronouns. I am the managing director of Justice in Aging’s health advocacy. I’m joined today by my colleagues, Natalie Kean, director of Federal Health Advocacy, and Gelila Selassie, a senior attorney with our health team. Justice in Aging is deeply engaged on protecting Medicaid. We’re developing resources and distributing educational materials. We’re meeting with lawmakers and we’re collaborating with partners across the country. We want to thank you all today for being here for this webinar. We know that there is a lot happening right now, so we appreciate the time you’re taking today to help protect Medicaid with us. Before we dive into content, just a few logistics. A reminder that today’s webinar is just 45 minutes long. All participants will be on mute. If you have a question about the material being presented or a technical concern, please use the question function on your Zoom platform.

We will also leave time at the end for question and answer. If you’d experience any difficulties accessing the webinar, please email trainings@justiceinaging.org. The materials we’ll discuss today are available on Justice in Aging’s website and our resource library. A recording of the webinar will also be posted in our resource library and made available on our Vimeo site. The links to the resources will also be shared in the Zoom chat box. And if you would like to enable closed captioning, you can hit the CC function on your Zoom platform. We also have ASL interpretation today. Just a little bit about Justice in Aging for those who might be new to us, we are a national organization. We are focused on eradicating senior poverty and by increasing access to affordable healthcare and economic security for all low income, older adults, with the focus on older adults who have historically been marginalized and excluded from justice, including older adults of color, older women, LGBTQ+ older adults, older adults with disabilities, immigrants, and those whose primary language is not English.

To carry out our mission at Justice in Aging, we are deeply committed to addressing the enduring harms of racism and other forms of discrimination across all areas of our advocacy. And we’re actively committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse staff and board. So turning to our agenda today, Gelila and Natalie are going to provide you with a refresher on the critical role that Medicaid plays for older adults. They’re going to provide you an update of the current state of play in Congress, and then we’re going to pivot to advocacy strategies, including a review of the key messages to push back on cutting Medicaid and new resources you can use in advocacy to protect access to care for older adults and people with disabilities. We will then open it up for questions. I’m going to turn it over to Gelila now to kick us off with an overview of the vital role Medicaid plays for older adults.

Gelila Selassie: Thank you so much, Amber. So as you mentioned, this is just sort of a quick overview. We did a much more in-depth webinar a little over a month ago, going over what the potential threats are and the importance of Medicaid. So folks are definitely welcome to use that as a refresher or refer to that. Just as a sort of quick overview of what Medicaid’s crucial role is, most people think of Medicare when it comes to healthcare for older adults, but Medicaid is also really important. More than 7 million seniors and 10 million people with disabilities are on Medicaid. Although there are specific Medicaid programs for older adults and people with disabilities, they can be really restrictive and very hard to get because you might have to meet a very specific type of criteria. So you might have to be a specific age or you have to meet a very specific disability criteria.

Because of that, there are 9 million older adults, age 50 to 64, and at least 6 million people with disabilities who are insured through Medicaid not because of their age or disability. So these are people that are very often receiving Medicaid if they are a parent of a young child or even more so if they are receiving Medicaid through Medicaid expansion. So it’s really important to note how interconnected Medicaid is within our populations, and it goes well beyond just this one specific type of Medicaid program. Medicaid is also unique because it doesn’t work like other types of health insurance. Medicaid’s broad coverage can reach beyond traditional medical services like long-term care, including home and community-based services and nursing facility coverage, as well as non-emergency medical transportation to be able to have transit to and from medical appointments and financial assistance for Medicare beneficiaries who are duly enrolled in Medicaid to make those Medicare costs more affordable.

And the next slide, Medicaid’s role for people with Medicare is really especially essential. There are 12.5 million Medicare beneficiaries who are also duly enrolled in Medicaid. Most Medicare enrollees are age 65 plus, but it’s important to remember that there are younger people who can qualify for Medicare, people who are under 65, if they have a disability or have a chronic condition like end stage renal disease. So either way, all tools, whether they are receiving Medicare because of age or disability, all tools have very limited income by virtue of needing Medicaid, and they very often have the highest healthcare and long-term care needs. Medicaid makes Medicare accessible and affordable for these populations by paying Medicare premiums and/or out of pocket costs for more than 10 million beneficiaries. The Medicare Savings Program is administered by state Medicaid agencies, even though it’s called them Medicare Savings Program or MSP.

And depending on the individual’s income, it’ll cover at least part B premiums. And then for very low income individuals, it will cover part A premiums and even out of pocket costs. So again, it’s really, really essential to have Medicaid provide access to these crucial Medicare benefits by making Medicare more affordable through the Medicare savings program. And even though Medicare is such a great comprehensive type of insurance, it still can be very limiting, particularly for the kinds of care that older adults need. Medicaid covers services that Medicare usually does not. So things like dental, vision, hearing, transportation like we discussed, and very, very importantly long-term care. Many people are very surprised when they turn 65 or older and they realize that Medicare is very limited in its coverage for nursing home care as well as home-based care. For nursing facility care, Medicare typically only covers the first 100 days, and so because of that, you’ll find that more than 60% of nursing facility residents are on Medicaid. It’s really the essential way for most people to get long-term care through Medicaid, not Medicare.

And so now, we’re going to go a deeper dive, just the state of play. So this is where things are right now with what’s happening in Congress with respect to these Medicaid cuts and the budget reconciliation process. I should also mention that things change very quickly. This is true as of today. If you watch this a little bit later in a couple of weeks, maybe things have shifted a little bit, but we wanted to make sure we update folks as best as we can. We talked a bit in the last webinar about budget reconciliation. It’s a procedural process used by Congress to fast track legislation by only requiring a simple majority in the Senate instead of the usual 60 vote majority, and then use it with budget reconciliation, members can’t use the filibuster as well. Currently, since the Republicans control the Senate, the House and White House, they can more easily use budget reconciliation to move bills with only 51 votes in the Senate.

And one tricky thing about budget reconciliation is that it can only be used for very specific bills, and there’s a very wide variety of pretty complicated procedural rules relating to what can be included in budget reconciliation and how the most essential, really crucial, very crux of requirement of budget reconciliation is that all the provisions must relate to the budget. So that’s why it’s budget reconciliation. It all has to impact the federal budget and it cannot add to the deficit. And that’s really important, because throughout these conversations, you may hear about things like pay-fors. And the idea is that in order to pay for one type of initiative, they have to make cuts in another way. So for example, may having to make cuts to Medicaid in order to pay for increased defense spending or new costs for tax cuts or anything else like that. And the Senate parliamentarian determines what provisions that are brought forward through budget reconciliation meet these requirements.

Then budget reconciliation only applies to mandatory spending. However, there’s an exception that social security can never be… Changes to social security is off limits and can’t be voted through budget reconciliation process. Next slide. So looking at the Fiscal Year 2025, even though it’s in essence a simpler way to get things passed by not needing that 60 vote majority and being filibuster proof, there’s still many steps in the process. And then, just to add, and you’ll hear this a lot over the coming weeks and months, this is very much a marathon and it’s really important that we fight back at each step because it’s much easier to stop things from being bad before they get too far along and it’ll be much harder to undo them as this process proceeds. So be ready to fight often as things go on. So first part of budget reconciliation is that the House and Senate create budget resolutions, which are instructions that direct specific committees to cut spending in certain areas. It’s really important to note that these resolutions are not laws, they’re just that they’re just instructions.

And so this is a phase that we are in now, both the House and the Senate have different resolutions. So the House resolution instructs the committee that has jurisdiction over Medicaid to cut $880 billion while the Senate directs their committee to cut much less, only at least a billion. So the resolution says, “House, you must cut at least 880 billion, Senate, you must cut at least 1 billion from effectively their Medicaid programs.” As of today, the Senate now has the House budget resolution, which includes a much higher minimum $880 billion cuts. I should mention this is 880 billion over 10 years. And then they must make adjustments that they can vote on and then send it back to the House so that they have a matching bill or rather matching budget resolution. And then in step two, the committees write and mark up these bills. So the specific types of cuts would be spelled out in this part of the process. So step ones put specific numbers on cuts.

And then step two is where they get into details about how they might make those cuts, which we’ll discuss. We discuss that link in the first webinar and we’ll discuss again. So these committees that have jurisdiction over Medicaid and the House, it’s the Energy and Commerce Committee and then the Senate, it’s a Senate Finance Committee. These committees could actually begin writing or marking things up before their chambers actually agree on a resolution. And then in step three, the House and Senate vote on the completed reconciliation package, the House has very slim margins, and so there’s an expectation for the House to vote first because they might have the more difficult challenge, but it’s likely that there’s going to be a lot of amendments and a lot of back and forth between the House and the Senate given the makeup of our politics and how wide-ranging potential cuts would be and the impact it would have on different states. So there’s probably going to be a lot of back and forth before there’s a vote on a final package.

And then looking at the timeline for where we are, again, this is going to fluctuate a lot. The budget reconciliation does apply to Fiscal Year 2025, which we’re in, until September 30th, which is the end of the fiscal year. So Congress technically has until then to vote on a final package. And so right now, we’re in step one, as we said, both chambers need to adopt the same instruction or budget resolution, and there’s just this massive, massive discrepancy, which is why this phase one process is taking so long. Again, the House has at least 880 billion in cuts over 10 years. The Senate has at least 1 billion in cuts to Medicaid over 10 years. There are additional areas for cuts that don’t outside of the healthcare realm and other jurisdictions, but this is where the biggest cuts are likely to be. And so the Speaker of the House wanted to vote on a package in May, but it could go very well into the summer.

So again, stay tuned. And then it’s just really important to note that the reconciliation process could be repeated for Fiscal Year 2026, and that’s because the reason why the two chambers have such big discrepancies in how much money they’re trying to cut is because they have two different approaches to budget reconciliation. So the House is looking to pass one large bill, which would mean one large bill to cover all of their priorities like tax cuts, energy spending, border spending, increased defense spending. And so in order to pay for all those really expensive things, they have to make massive, massive cuts to programs like Medicaid. Meanwhile, the Senate is interested in a two pronged approach where they pass a smaller bill now and then repeat that process for 2026. And so the idea is to put a bill first that would pay for lower ticket items and then a larger bill later on where you’d see even bigger cuts to Medicaid.

So that’s one of the reasons why there’s been this discrepancy. And then we’ll talk about it a little bit more. But because of the way these resolutions have been written, you might not see the word Medicaid in there, but the Congressional budget office did confirm that Congress will have to make cuts to Medicaid to reach $880 billion. The jurisdictions that control Medicaid cannot make these cuts anywhere else besides Medicaid in order to meet their instructions. And so Natalie and I are going to go into some of the messages that pushed for how we will push back on all this. And so just to start looking at the threats to Medicaid, as I mentioned, there’s this attempt to say that Medicaid will not be harmed or it’ll only be trimmed. And again, the CBO report said that’s just not possible. 93% of non-Medicare spending under the House Energy and Commerce Committee is Medicaid, and they’ve been very, very insistent on not touching Medicare at all.

So that really only leaves Medicaid as the only possible option for these massive cuts. And there are five ways of cutting Medicaid across two large buckets. The first category focuses on cutting the funding mechanisms for Medicaid, and the second category looks at cutting the enrollments and services. So again, we talked about this at length in the last webinar. We have a couple resources that go this issue briefs that discuss these in more detail. The biggest thing to note is that block grants and per capita caps basically just put a specific limit in how much money states are allowed to spend from the federal government on Medicaid. Right now, there is a federal match percentage that varies at least 50% and can go up significantly higher for states depending on if they’re a high-end income or lower income state. And so what a block grant would do is basically say we are going to give you just a set amount of money, either it’s one big block of money to spend on your entire Medicaid program or lots of smaller caps of money for each type of Medicaid enrollee.

And once you reach those limits, we will not pay it a dime more. And anything else the state would have to come out of pocket for. Relatedly, the second option is to cut that FMAP. So instead of the 50% or 70% or 75% contributions from the federal government, it could be a lot lower. We’ve heard of it being that the floor would be lowered, so about a dozen states or so that pay for the federal government pays at least 50%. The federal government may only pay 30% or 20%, or they could make these cuts across the board. So every state is going to be receiving less from the federal government. And then they could be restricting provider taxes, which is how states are able to pay for their share of the Medicaid reimbursements, and then they could cut enrollments or services to really burdensome and really unnecessary work requirements, not these work requirements don’t work.

We have another resource on this, really harms everybody. And the idea is to effectively make it difficult for people to keep their Medicaid by having them go through very onerous difficult processes to show that, oh, they are working even though majority of Medicaid recipients are either working caregiving or have a disability or are in school. And then the last bit is repealing really important regulations that were passed in the last few years that strengthen Medicaid. One is the Medicaid access rule that applies to mostly HCBS beneficiaries. Another is the streamlining rule that makes it easier to renew your coverage and get enrolled in coverage. And then another big one is the nursing home staffing role that sets minimum standards for what can be for how nursing homes have to staff facilities to protect seniors from unnecessary harms. And so with that, I think I will pass it over to Natalie to talk a little bit more about some of these reforms.

Natalie Kean: All right, thanks so much, Gelila. So yeah, as Gelila went over, there are a lot of different ways that Medicaid might be cut, but today, we really want to focus on thinking about how to fight back and the messaging that we know is working so far. So as I just want to reemphasize what Gelila shared about the process for budget reconciliation, Congress is still at step one, even though they voted on budget resolutions, they’re still very early on in the process and that’s thanks to our advocacy and fighting back, we’re slowing them down, making them realize that cutting Medicaid is not a good idea and it’s not what their constituents want. So the first important key message is to know that all of the proposals, no matter how they’re described, are cuts to Medicaid. The explicit goal is to generate federal government savings to pay for tax breaks for billionaires or other priorities that Gelila talked about. The costs will be pushed to the states and the states will then be forced to fill the gap by cutting benefits, cutting provider payments and/or cutting eligibility for Medicaid.

Medicaid is already very lean and cost-efficient, so that’s why these cuts are not affordable in any state. And to the point of the numbers that we saw in the budget resolutions, it’s impossible to cut hundreds of billions of dollars away from Medicaid without taking people’s healthcare away. So specifically for older adults, if Medicaid funding were to be cut and states face these budget shortfalls, they’re going to cut optional benefits or eligibility categories. These include critical services that older adults and people with disabilities rely on every day. Most importantly, home and community-based services. These are often delivered through waivers, so they have many different names in different states, but anything provided to help older adults and people with disabilities stay in the community would be at risk of being cut. Dental, vision and hearing services are optional eligibility categories that allow people with a little bit higher income to qualify for long-term care would be at risk of being cut.

Coverage for immigrants would be at risk of being cut. Many states have used their own funding to provide access to immigrants regardless of immigration status, but if they have holes in their budget, they’re not going to be able to continue to provide the coverage. A state might also look to cut enrollment for mandatory populations, so they could eliminate expansions for aged and disabled eligibility or for Medicare savings programs. And then they could also choose to cut provider payment rates. And provider payment rates in Medicaid are already very low, and especially for the direct care workforce, people providing care at home and in nursing facilities. And so there’s already a crisis there with that workforce, and this would only make that worse. The second key message is that there is no way to carve out or shield older adults from harm. So we’re hearing from some members of Congress that they are protecting seniors and people with disabilities.

They may say they’re protecting the most vulnerable or the people the program was intended for. We can’t fall for this argument. We have to make clear that seniors and people with disabilities will be hurt by any of these proposals. Medicaid is important for all populations and all populations benefit from a strong Medicaid program. We can’t silo parts of the program and expect them to be safe from cuts or the people to be safe from losing access to care and coverage. Medicaid just doesn’t work that way. We need the strong program for everyone. And then even beyond the Medicaid program itself, hospital closures and economic impacts will harm everyone regardless of what type of health insurance you have. So there is a lot of talk about out cuts being targeted at working-age adults and some members of Congress may even claim that taking away coverage from working-age adults is necessary to protect older adults. This is false. About one in five people ages 50 to 64 rely on Medicaid. There are many, many working-age with disabilities who are enrolled in Medicaid as Gelila explained through the Medicaid expansion.

Also, people with disabilities and older adults may be relying on Medicaid before they’re able to get eligibility through a disability or aging pathway or while waiting for Medicare. Also, many paid and unpaid caregivers rely on Medicaid for their own health insurance. And so if they’re not able to get the care that they need to stay healthy, that’s going to impact the older adults and people with disabilities and children that they care for. And exemptions to these requirements don’t work. We know from experience in other states that have tried to implement work requirements, for example, that many who should be exempt still have their coverage cut. Most people on Medicaid who are of working age are in fact working. Those who aren’t have disabilities or are caregiving. And again, even if there are exemptions for these populations, it’s just too difficult to make them work. Extra red tape, also, misuses resources and the ripple effects cause delays and harm to everyone. So we saw this in Georgia where they have implemented work requirements that has slowed down Medicaid applications for older adults age 65 and older. So it is harming everyone.

And our third key message is that a cut to Medicaid is a cut to Medicare, as Gelila went over, one in five people with Medicare are duly enrolled in Medicaid. 30% of Medicaid spending supports people with Medicare, and that’s even higher when we’re looking at long-term care. 60% of Medicaid spending on long-term care supports people with Medicare. Medicaid also makes Medicare affordable as Gelila discussed, it enables 8 million people to afford to see the doctor by covering copays and deductibles. It puts $185 back in the pocket of 10 million Medicare enrollees every month by covering their part B premiums. And this is critical for people living on social security income to have that money to buy groceries, to pay their rent and utilities. And Medicaid also strengthens Medicare for everyone. It improves health outcomes, it helps people age in place, it keeps hospitals open and other providers in business, especially in rural areas. And again, it doesn’t matter whether you have Medicare or any other type of insurance, if the hospital in your community closes, you lose access to care.

So what can you do? We have some great storytelling tips and storytelling continues to be the single most important thing that we can all do. Our partners at Caring Across Generations shared some helpful tips on a webinar that we wanted to pass along. So storytelling is a power building tool. Stories bring attention to Medicaid from both the public and lawmakers, and that attention builds power that can result in change. We’re already seeing this happen in this fight. So stories can be shared in so many different places. You can share them with the news, whether it’s print or on the internet, radio, TV, carrying across generations offered a great tip on how to maybe get a story in with your local media, checking their website for specific departments and reaching out to a reporter there or submitting something like a news tip. Many local news stations have these your stories segments. That would be a great idea as a way to get your local news to cover Medicaid.

Opinion pieces, op-eds, letters to the editor, blogs, you can use social media, public speaking, whether it’s at a rally or on a panel, and also one-on-one conversations. We don’t want to overlook that as an important way to share your story and build power. Some storytelling tips. So the parts of a good story are explaining what the issue is, who is impacted, why people should care and how to take action. A couple ideas about framing are to focus on the assets, not the deficits. So this means describing how Medicaid helps someone first. So an example of that is saying, I have independence because of Medicaid. It’s okay to talk about challenges and difficulties, but don’t lead with them. Talk about the importance of Medicaid in your life or in your client’s life. And then the other tip is to show don’t tell, and I have some examples of that. These are stories from advocates who have shared them with us at Justice in Aging, and they do a good job of going beyond the simple telling of facts to showing the impact Medicaid has.

So for example, instead of just simply saying, I have a Medicaid waiver, talk about what that means. So this person shared that without Medicaid, I don’t think I would be able to survive. I need the help of my home health aide. She cooks, does my laundry, reminds me about my medications and more. If I didn’t receive Medicaid, I would have no help at all. Another quote from someone who is getting help from a Medicare savings program leads with the point of Medicaid helping her afford Medicare, but then goes on to describe what that means. Medicare was accounting for 80% of her income. So number one, it’s nice that the Medicare premium gets paid, but the big thing is that I did not have to pay the coinsurance and the drug costs went down. I did not have to depend on my immediate family to pay for things. I was trying really hard to figure out a more sustainable way to live with my illness. The Medicaid program helped me do that. It gave me a little cushion.

So these are really tangible examples that anyone can picture in their mind the value of Medicaid for these individuals. So carrying across generations has some easy to use storytelling tools that we recommend you all check out. They have a version where you can share your story in writing, but they also have a tool where you can record a video or upload a video. It’s really fancy, easy to use and a great way to get your story out there. Once you’ve recorded your story, be sure to share it with your lawmakers on social media with the local media, but also share it with us at Justice in Aging. We can help amplify these stories. So please email your stories to us. And then I’m going to go through these slides pretty quickly because these are slides that we went over in our February webinar. But education continues to be an important role for advocates. Even if you feel like you can’t do direct advocacy because of lobbying or funding restrictions, educating lawmakers and the public about the importance of Medicaid, again through those stories is really important.

And then in terms of direct advocacy to Gelila’s point, opposing Medicaid cuts now and often there are such narrow margins in the House and Senate. So every vote is critical. We still don’t have legislation written, so we’re still at the point where we can stop those cuts from even being written into bills. And both of your senators as well as your representative, need to hear from you, even if you’ve called before, even if you’ve written before, call again. I want to highlight a new resource we have. It’s a template letter that you can use either for your organization or maybe gather a few organizations in your area or in your state to write to your members of Congress. There’s great links in there to provide specific data on older adults and people with disabilities in your district. And don’t forget to talk to your state officials as well. Folks in state legislatures, especially dealing with appropriations in the budget in the state legislator know how critical Medicaid is to the State’s budget.

So please share your messages with them as well. Review of our key messages with an additional note that’s always helpful to end on is emphasizing that cutting Medicaid is abandoning our seniors, and we have our Justice in Aging resources, the same resources we shared last time, but also some new resources including a fact sheet that we partnered with other organizations on on a cut to Medicaid is a cut to Medicare. Our new issue brief on how Medicaid funding caps would harm older adults and an analysis with the National Partnership for Women and Families on how Medicaid cuts will harm older women and the economy. And we’ll leave you with some other additional resources from other organizations, some links to get involved. And with that, I think, we’ll open it up a few questions.

Amber Christ: Great, thanks, Natalie and Gelila. So we’re going to answer some questions. We’re not going to get to all of them. There were many in the Q&A, and in this rapidly changing environment in Congress, we do encourage you to sign up for our alerts and look at those other resources we’ve included in the slides for the most up-to-date information. While we know that the harm to older adults is clear, what’s happening in DC is changing all the time. So we want you to have the most current information even when you’re outside of these webinars’ day to day. So, turning to our first question, could one of you explain again why the $880 billion that is in the House budget resolution would be a cut to Medicaid and not something else, and how folks might push back on their lawmakers when they claim that they haven’t voted to cut Medicaid?

Natalie Kean: Yeah, I can… Oh, go ahead, Gelila.

Gelila Selassie: I can start. And Natalie, feel free to jump in. Yeah, so it is really tricky. As we mentioned, there’s a lot of steps in the budget resolution process, at this early stage that step one, what the resolutions do is they instruct committees to make these cuts in programs that they oversee. And so there’s a specific minimum $880 billion cut that’s sent to the committee, Energy and Commerce, that controls Medicaid, Medicare among others. But Medicaid and Medicare are the biggest programs that they oversee. So it’s just mathematically impossible for them to make $800 billion in those programs, especially if they say they’re not cutting Medicare. The only option that’s left is Medicaid.

Natalie Kean: Yeah, and pushing back on that I think is citing the Congressional Budget Office report. And KFF also has some helpful explainers just doing that math, but I think it is disingenuous for members of Congress to be saying they aren’t voting for Medicaid cuts, that it’s just a step in the process because it’s a necessary step in the process, so we expect them, you should tell your lawmakers, you expect them to vote differently next time.

Amber Christ: Thanks both. Speaking of KFF, could you point people again to where they might find the particular impact on their own state budgets and specific populations in their states?

Natalie Kean: Yeah. So, on this slide, the second bullet, KFF has a new map and table below that shows for each congressional district Medicaid enrollment by eligibility groups. So that means it’s broken out by people age 65 plus, people who are eligible based on disability as well as eligibility through the expansion population and other populations as well.

Amber Christ: And I will just note that KFF used to be the Kaiser Family Foundation, but they now go by KFF. And so they are a nonpartisan research organization that puts out helpful resources that help us understand the impact that these cuts could have on different populations and on states. Speaking of states, again, could you just mention a little bit about how Medicaid might be called something different in states and how people should approach that?

Natalie Kean: Yeah, we recommend, especially when talking with the public and people, your clients and so on, and using the specific state names not only for Medicaid itself. So in California, it’s Medi-Cal. In Wisconsin, it’s BadgerCare. In Oklahoma, it’s SoonerCare. But beyond that for the home and community-based services waivers, that’s where it gets super confusing and tricky. And we hear a lot of people don’t realize that those are Medicaid programs. Gelila, you probably have some other examples top of mind, but one in California is IHSS, In-Home Supportive Services is a Medicaid program.

Gelila Selassie: Yeah, there’s healthy living waivers, for example, for Medicaid, home and community-based services or healthy aging, things like that. So whatever the specific program is, it’s really helpful to use that because it’s not always clear that people are talking about Medicaid when they’re using different names for these programs or these Medicaid waivers.

Natalie Kean: And one more to it are the PACE programs, Programs for All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly, P-A-C-E is how it’s the acronym that’s used. Those are also Medicaid funded programs.

Amber Christ: And I see we’re right at time, so I’m going to turn it over to Gelila who’s going to tell you how you can act right now to protect Medicaid.

Gelila Selassie: Yeah, thank you, Amber. And so, one thing that we really wanted to make sure folks are aware of is just some big reminders that Medicaid is incredibly popular. Two thirds of adults have a connection to Medicaid, and it’s really important that people know how important it is for them, for their neighbors and their communities, and that across political spectrums, across states and populations. Majority of people do not want Medicaid to be cut. So please talk about this anytime you can. It’s really important to make it personal to you and to your family as Natalie mentioned about what’s at stake and how this has helped you. And then, again, the fight’s far from over. We have many more steps to go. And so just make sure that you, of course, take care of yourselves and just continue with this advocacy. I know that we’re very grateful and appreciative of that. And then because we have a bit of time before we reach the top of the hour, we’d love for you to take this opportunity based off of what we’ve mentioned today and call your member of Congress now.

So you can call this 202 number and say the name of your representative to be connected to their office, or you can use this Caring Across Generations calling tool and script that will link you to your member of Congress. So as you mentioned, tell them about yourselves, why you care about Medicaid and healthcare access for older adults, and ask them to protect Medicaid from any cuts. And then you can deliver that same message again to both your senators as well. And then once you do that, we’d love to know how it went. So please use the post webinar survey that will go out in a few minutes or email us at info@justiceinaging.org and let us know what that was like and what your representative may have told you or what their staffer may have told you. So we really hope you take advantage of that right now and as early and often as you can.

Amber Christ: All right. Well, I hope you’re taking that opportunity to call Congress now using that phone number or using the calling tool and script. And we really want to thank you again for joining us today for this webinar and working with us to protect Medicaid. Hope everyone has a very good afternoon. Thank you. Bye.Paste Transcript Here