Access Living friends and allies,
It’s another pressure cooker week in Washington, DC! We need your help. Right now, the U.S. Senate is moving fast to finalize and pass their version of the budget reconciliation bill, known as the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB). The OBBB is the bill that contains the largest proposed federal cuts to Medicaid, ever. Any cut to Medicaid, in any part, is going to damage the rest of Medicaid services, because states simply do not have the cash to fill the gap. And that is bad news for people with disabilities and anyone else who relies on Medicaid.
TAKE ACTION TODAY: Quick link to send your U.S. Senators an email to help stop cuts to Medicaid
What’s going on? Senate leadership will begin voting on their version of the OBBB as soon as tomorrow. The vote process is expected to take a few days, possibly wrapping up on Sunday. Because the Senate OBBB is different from the House OBBB, there will need to be a deal to combine the two bills, and then send the final OBBB to the President to sign by his preferred date of Friday, July 4. This deal-making process is known as a conference, and it could get very complicated.
The House passed the OBBB with a vote of 215-214, and it took a huge amount of work to get those 215 votes. Any changes made by the Senate side could disrupt any agreements the House has in place. It is unclear whether the House vote might simply fall apart, or whether the White House will lean on Congress hard enough to make sure the OBBB passes whatever deal is made in conference.
At any rate, now is the time to act. Both versions of the OBBB will devastate Medicaid, including home and community based services. The Congressional Budget Office stated, in relation to the Senate OBBB:
“CBO expects that in response to those provisions, states would modify their Medicaid or state-funded insurance programs to curtail their spending by reducing provider payment rates, reducing the scope or amount of optional services, and reducing Medicaid enrollment.”
What this really means is that the OBBB would gut Medicaid so much that not only would Medicaid shrink, but states would be forced to cut back optional programs. Guess what is considered optional? Home and community-based services! While the above quote refers to the Senate OBBB, it also applies to the House OBBB as well. As you can see, we need to fight back! Again….TAKE ACTION TODAY: Quick link to send your U.S. Senators an email to help stop cuts to Medicaid. Please encourage everyone you know to speak out to save Medicaid today!