Congress is working on a proposal to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from the Medicaid program, jeopardizing people’s health insurance and healthcare.

As the CEO of Thunder Bay Community Health Service, I want to remind our community that these cuts will harm our patients — maybe that’s you, a family member, a friend — and our health center. TBCHS serves nearly 20,000 patients, over 25% of whom get their health insurance through Medicaid. Patients qualify for Medicaid coverage for a variety of reasons: some are children, in foster care, making minimum wage, their job doesn’t offer insurance, are disabled and unable to work, or are students. People insured by Medicaid are our neighbors, and they deserve quality healthcare.

TBCHS provides care for our communities largely because of Medicaid. We serve everyone regardless of insurance status. But our ability to do that relies on maintaining a balance of serving people with and without health insurance. If many people who currently get their health insurance through Medicaid lose coverage and become uninsured, our health center will lose some of the already scarce resources and revenue that sustain the healthcare we provide. We may have no choice but to cut services to keep our doors open, and that impacts everyone, not just people insured through Medicaid.

Patients in need of care will find care, but it may be more costly care at our local hospital emergency room. And, if those patients are uninsured, that will jeopardize our hospital’s sustainability as well.

The final budget Congress will draft is uncertain, but any proposal that includes large reductions to Medicaid will harm TBCHS’s ability to continue to provide care in our community. Cuts to Medicaid are bad for states, Health Centers, and the patients that we serve

RICHARD BATES,

Chief Executive Officer, MD, CPE at Thunder Bay Community Health Service, Inc. in Alpena