We will visit Congressman Yoder's office this week to ask him to Protect Medicaid and Repair the ACA.

People think Medicaid is financial assistance for the poor. It is, and assisting the poor is a worthy goal, but Medicaid funds care for many other groups of people as well. These groups include children of low-income parents, the elderly, and people with disabilities.

Here are some benefits of Medicaid at current funding levels:

• It helps thousands of uninsured military veterans gain access to quality, affordable care.
• It helps keep insurance costs down by providing preventive care so the uninsured don’t have to resort to emergency rooms for their care.
• It helps people in need stay in their own homes and communities—much less expensive than residential care.  These at-home services include house cleaning and preparing meals, toileting, transferring from a bed to a wheelchair, bathing, dressing, managing medications, and light household chores.
• Similarly, Medicaid covers doctor-ordered, temporary in-home services like skilled nursing care, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech-language therapy. At $22/hour, on average, this at-home cost is low compared to out-of-home care.

• Medicaid funds help for family caregivers, including day-care and evening care in many communities.

• It provides meal delivery services, transportation for things like shopping and medical appointments, visitor or companion services, and medical alert buttons to call emergency first responders.

• Medicaid-eligible students with disabilities must continue to receive mandated services such as paraprofessionals, counselors, school nurses, speech-language therapy, occupational and physical therapy, assisstive technology and medical devices such as feeding tubes. Medicaid reimburses 16% of these costs.  Cuts will cost KS-3 millions of dollars and further damage public education because those services must be paid for with general fund dollars.


Cutting Medicaid funds is absolutely unacceptable.  Healthcare and related services are basic human rights, and polls show the majority of KS-3rd district voters agree.  We urge Congressman Yoder to safeguard our future and choose the people of KS-3 over party pressures.  We guarantee him that his decision won’t be forgotten in the the 2018 election cycle.