On Friday, before hosting a roundtable discussion about the effects of the federal budget bill’s impact on New Mexico’s health care, U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) got the story straight from the horse's mouth. The meeting was at First Nations Community Healthsource, where Heinrich talked to patients about what losing Medicaid would mean for them.
Miguel Villanueva said he’s only alive because of health care he’s received through Medicaid, which covers a wider range of services than Medicare. At 75 years old, he said he’s especially worried about work requirements for Medicaid.
“For me, it's going to be devastating. If I have to go to work, I don't know how I’m going to do it, or where I'm going to find the work,” he said. “Even if you have friends and all this and that, it's going to be impossible.”
He was one of three patients Heinrich met along with First Nations CEO Linda Stone.
The proposed federal budget bill known as the “Big Beautiful Bill” would potentially cut almost 800 billion dollars from Medicaid over the next 10 years, according to KFF Health News.
Another First Nations patient Kaitlyn B. Roe says the effects of losing Medicaid are a matter of life and death. She pointed to a study that estimates those cuts could cause about 16,500 additional medically preventable deaths per year, and says she thinks it will hit New Mexico especially hard.
“You've got a population now that is one of the poorest in the country, has already less access than most of the country, and you're asking us to take that hit,” she said “It's pure, unadulterated greed.”
Another patient from the Navajo Nation said he’s worried about Medicaid cuts hitting at the same time as proposed cuts to the Indian Health Service, especially with possible cuts to Social Security coming in a few years.
“And how am I going to live after that?” he said. “I'm going to end up out on the street.”
Heinrich said sharing stories like those will be key to trying to get his colleagues to compromise on Medicaid cuts.
“I think, unfortunately, they were the kind of stories that you might expect,” he said. “Health care is just so fundamental to being able to have a stable life where you can contribute to your community, and if you don't have that health care, then everything else can go sideways in a hurry.”
The budget reconciliation bill is currently working its way through the Senate.
Support for this coverage comes from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
