Local medical and nonprofit officials, and beneficiaries of Medicaid and Medicare met with Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, on Tuesday, March 18, for a roundtable discussion about the potential loss of Medi-Cal health insurance.
The discussion, at Beach Cities Health District in Redondo Beach, came as Repunlicans in Congress are considering significant cuts to funding for Medicare and Medicaid. Tuesday's event included meeting with Medicaid and Medicare participants and local leaders to learn first-hand how these changes will impact residents.
A budget proposal from the U.S. House of Representatives, if enacted, would shrink Medicaid and Medicare spending by $880 billion over 10 years. The proposal is part of an overall effort by Republicans and the Trump administration to slash the federal budget.
Medicaid provides health insurance for people with low incomes, a group that typically includes senior citizens with fixed incomes, adults with disabilities and pregnant women. Medicare, meanwhile, provides health insurance for people 65 or older, and some people younger than 65 with certain disabilities or conditions.
The roundtable, held in the allcove Beach Cities youth mental health center, on the BCHD's fourth floor, was part of the House Democrats' Medicaid Day of Action on Tuesday, which was intended to advocate for keeping the programs that have provided health care to those who cannot afford private insurance.
Eliminating access to affordable health care would make if difficult for the professionals at facilities to provide care to people who depend on government services for regular doctor visits, critical treatments and more, officials said.
Medi-Cal, California's Medicaid program, covers more than one-third of the state's population. Without these insurance programs, the nation's oldest and most vulnerable citizens could be left without health insurance at a time when they need it most, according to BCHD.
But it's under threat to go away if the House of Representatives votes to cut funding for Medicaid.
More days of action will take place throughout the year to advocate for Medicaid as a necessity for Californians, Lieu said Tuesday, and other members of Congress are also hosting events to highlight the importance of Medicaid in their communities.
"We will be doing additional days of action on an ongoing basis," Lieu said, "because this is one of the most important bills that Congress is going to vote on in the near term."
Although the federal budget plan does not have specific spending cut details, it does instruct the Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid and Medicare spending, to cut $880 billion -- a large chunk of the up to $2 trillion in total proposed cuts.
The proposal also includes work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries.
"It's common sense," Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana said. "Little things like that make a big difference not only in the budgeting process but in the morale of the people. You know, work is good for you. You find dignity in work."
But Paul Stansbury, the president of the South Bay chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said on Tuesday that it is "ridiculous" to expect people with serious mental health issues to meet work requirements.
"Folks are on Medicare and Medi-Cal because they cant get private insurance," Lieu said. "If you don't have any insurance, you're going to at some point get so sick you're going to go to the emergency room and get treated, causing more money" to be spent by taxpayers.
For public health agencies like BCHD, said Kerianne Lawson, the agency's chief programs officer, Medicaid cuts would cause a domino effect of issues.
"Our impact would be clients ... losing services, and us becoming the safety net," Lawson said. "We'd see our costs increase, as well as provide a lower level of assistance. It's a loss for everybody -- clients who are receiving help and (an increased) burden to local taxpayers."
When the Affordable Care Act went into effect in 2010, for example, the state's In-Home Supportive Services program, started handing out more money and increased hours allotted for care, Lawson said, which reduced taxpayer spending. But that could all go away.
Public education systems, meanwhile, would be expected to absorb the extra costs for programs that depend on the federal assistance if Medi-Cal goes away, said Danielle Duncan-Bernstein, executive director of special education for the Redondo Beach Unified School District.
The district gets reimbursements from Medi-Cal to support services like speech therapy, Duncan-Bernstein said, and she's worried that students won't get the services they need in a preventative and proactive way without it.
Cesar Barba, associate medical director at Venice Family Clinic, said Tuesday that diminishing Medi-Cal would force that facility to take a significant step back in its mission to provide free health care.
Half of the clinic's revenue comes from Medi-Cal reimbursements, he said, and more than half of the facility's patients are adults who would not have otherwise been eligible for health insurance or primary care without Medi-Cal.
"People who don't have insurance," Barba said, "tend to wait until their circumstances become so dire, they have to go to the emergency room."
Medicaid, which was established in 1965, opened the door for people to attain health insurance who had never had it before, Barba said, especially when the Affordable Care Act in 2010 strengthened Medicare by ensuring beneficiaries get more coverage for their prescriptions, expanding access to free preventive services like annual health screenings, and implementing payment reforms to improve quality and reduce costs.
Kevin Tuxford, a Venice Family Clinic patient who was part of Tuesday's roundtable, said that the in-home supportive services he receives through Medi-Cal saved his life.
"If those services disappear, it's going to be a disaster for many people in many states," Tuxford said. "These services are essential for people to survive the way our health care system is set up currently."
Tuxford gets help through BCHD and still benefits from IHSS, he added. The help is essential for people like him, he said.
Lisa Daggett-Cummings, development director at the South Bay Children's Health Center, said that she is "staying up at night," worried about the potential cuts.
"I'm desperately afraid of losing funding for these families in need," Daggett-Cummings said.
She also doesn't know how the center, which serves more than 25,000 people annually, would keep providing the services they do -- like connecting children with dental care -- without Medi-Cal.
"If 85% of our funding goes away, we will be in trouble," 'Daggett-Cummings said. "Making up that funding from public to private would be impossible."