HOW MEDICAID EFFECTS FAMILIES

Letter

Protecting Medicaid

Published: June 23, 2011




ShareTO the editor:

It is a hopeful sign that 41 senators have spoken out in favor of sustaining the Medicaid program (“Signs of Life Spotted in the Senate,” editorial, June 19).

The middle class should not be lured into thinking that Medicaid is a program for the poor. Medicaid provides an important safety net for middle-class families when parents and grandparents need long-term services and supports.

At a cost of as much as $100,000 a year, it doesn’t take long to wipe out a lifetime’s worth of savings. Without Medicaid, adult children would have to take on these costs — often just at the time they are digging deeper to pay for college for their children.

And severely cutting Medicaid will most certainly hurt our nation’s ability to provide health coverage to America’s poor — including low-wage, direct-care workers who provide long-term services and supports but ironically often do not have health coverage themselves.

Protecting Medicaid is essential to the economic security of the vast majority of Americans.

STEVE EDELSTEIN
Bronx, June 20, 2011

The writer is national policy director of PHI, formerly the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute.