Laura Gillen: GOP cuts to Medicaid will impact all of Long Island

House Republicans advanced their plan last week to cut $715 billion in Medicaid funding over the next decade. Medicaid provides essential medical services to millions of children, seniors, people with disabilities, and veterans across our country, including 170,000 of my constituents in New York’s 4th Congressional District. These reductions will surely hurt recipients, but it is important to note that the impact of this budget cutback will stretch far beyond just these groups.

The warnings are already plentiful, and dire. These sweeping cuts have prompted alarm from health policy experts, economists and medical groups, such as the American Hospital Association, who all indicated that Republicans’ proposed changes to Medicaid will touch all New Yorkers, including those with private insurance. All Americans can expect increased costs for private payers and reduced services at hospitals and other health care providers. It is critical that Long Islanders understand the impact this legislation could have on all our families, friends and neighbors.

To ensure that constituents understand some of the impacts of the GOP budget being advanced in Congress, I hosted a budget briefing with my Nassau County colleague, Congressman Tom Suozzi. The briefing included factual testimony from nonpartisan presenters including Northwell Health CEO Michael Dowling.
Mr. Dowling made clear that a sudden spike in uninsured patients resulting from Medicaid cuts is likely to force hospitals, clinics, and other health facilities to cut back services, reduce medical staff or even close their doors. When hospitals and other health providers cut back their services or close, it affects all of us, regardless of our health care coverage.

In fact, policy experts at the John Hopkins University of Public Health have forecast that premiums will rise for all Americans as hospitals are forced to pass the cost of keeping their doors open to consumers. I have spoken with a number of other Long Island health providers, including Stony Brook Medicine and the Healthcare Association of New York, who also underscored how these cuts would raise health care costs for all patients in our region.

Not only will New Yorkers’ health care costs balloon, but the proposed Medicaid cuts are also likely to increase our tax burden. A brief from the nonpartisan health policy organization KFF concluded that these cuts will cause massive state budget shortfalls, prompting tax increases while downsizing funding to education, infrastructure and other local priorities.
Long Islanders already pay some of the highest taxes in the country. We cannot afford another tax increase.

As your congresswoman, I am committed to fighting against these dangerous attempts to attack Long Islanders’ health care. We must work to protect and strengthen access to health care, not make it more expensive and less accessible.

Laura A. Gillen represents the 4th Congressional District.