From the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center (http://www.pennbpc.org):
UPDATE: This has just passed in the Senate. The action below will now direct your messages to members of the House. The other link will also direct you to where you can find phone numbers for your Representatives.
At a time when Republicans in the United State Congress are trying frantically to repeal the ACA and roll back Medicaid, their compatriots in the Pennsylvania General Assembly are about to do the same thing.
This state-level attack on Medicaid – House Bill 59 (HB59) – would create new and unnecessary obstacles for Medicaid recipients to receive the care they need. Earlier this month, House Republican leaders amended the bill to include the attack on Medicaid recipients – overwhelmingly children, seniors, and people with disabilities – and passed it in a rushed and controversial vote. HB59 is now being considered by the state Senate and could receive a vote in a matter of hours.
It is critical that our state senators hear from us immediately that the work requirements and new premiums and co-pays for Medicaid recipients be removed from the legislation. If these provisions are not removed from HB59, the result will be burdensome rules that are basically designed to keep vulnerable people from the benefits they need.
Go to https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-the-pa-house-gop-stop-your-attacks-on-pa-medicaid-recipients to send an email, right now, to your state senator opposing the attack on Medicaid that was added to HB59 by the state House! While you’re at it, consider making a call as well. Find your Senator’s contact information at http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/index.cfm#address.
What’s the objection to work requirements or premiums for Medicaid?
First, support for a work or job search requirement is based on a misconception that there are a large number of able-bodied adults who receive Medicaid, could work, and are not doing so. That’s simply not true.
Second, creating premiums or additional co-pays for Medicaid undermines the whole point of the program, which is to help people whose incomes are so low that they cannot afford health insurance. Medicaid recipients already pay co-pays for many services. Raising them for individuals who make less than $503/month would force people who live in poverty to choose between paying the health insurance bill and paying for food or rent.
Click here to send an email to your state senator opposing the legislation.
Third, both work requirements and co-pays will deny people with legitimate claims benefits while wasting the money and other resources — and that, frankly, may be the point. Every time we add rules and regulations and other red tape to a human service program, we make it harder for people to secure the benefits they deserve under the law.
Just like in Washington, politicians in Harrisburg are choosing to benefit the wealthiest Pennsylvanians rather than provide health care for working people. They are trying to cut Medicaid benefits in order to close the deficits that their decades of corporate tax cuts have created.
Read this one pager we created to get more information about this terrible proposal.
And be sure to click here to tell your state senator to oppose it. A vote is imminent. Please take action now.
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