This week, it's expected the Senate will begin voting on Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill", which includes substantial cuts to Medicaid. However, New Yorkers with disabilities would be impacted by these cuts in both direct and indirect ways.
TRANSCRIPT
Emyle Watkins: Hi, I'm Emyle Watkins and this is the Disabilities Beat. This week, it's expected the Senate will begin voting on Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill", which includes substantial cuts to Medicaid.
Kirsten Gillibrand: Under the cuts as proposed, it's cutting about 14 million people off of Medicaid, including a lot of people with disabilities, seniors, veterans, parents, pregnant women and children. And so we're very worried.
Emyle Watkins: Last week, U.S. Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand visited St. Joseph's campus in Cheektowaga to speak out against the cuts.
Kirsten Gillibrand: Without those resources coming into our hospitals, into our state, it'll put a lot of safety net hospitals at risk. It'll put a lot of community hospitals at risk, nursing homes at risk.
Emyle Watkins: In Western New York, Medicaid enrollment ranges from its lowest at 21.4% of the population in Wyoming County to 31.1% in Chautauqua County. Erie and Niagara Counties fall right in the middle of that range. About 35% of all New Yorkers are enrolled in Medicaid as New York has one of the broadest eligibility definitions according to the state comptroller's office.
But Medicaid isn't just federally funded. States contribute, and in New York, counties and the City of New York also contribute. Elected officials, state officials and advocates have been sounding the alarm. If the federal government makes cuts, New York doesn't have the money to cover it.
Kirsten Gillibrand: And our state cannot make up the difference. It's going to result in either people not getting care or hospitals like this making up the difference, and then them having to rely more on philanthropic support or other resources. But at the end of the day, some people are not going to get the care they need, and that is the truth of it.
Emyle Watkins: And if that money is cut, the concern isn't just what the federal government has to cut, but the decision states will have to make as far as cuts to their unique Medicaid-funded programs. I recently spoke with Willow Baer, the Commissioner for the New York office for people with developmental disabilities. She explained that while her system isn't directly targeted by the bill, she is worried about the long-term implications it would have on state services.
Willow Baer: The analysis in New York State is that we would be losing $13.5 billion in the health and hospital system. So that is not the OPWDD's service system directly, but anytime you chip away at safety net and poverty services, particularly in healthcare, it immediately impacts people with disabilities. So we are really keeping an eye on what that would look like and how that would impact what we already know is a very hard-to-access healthcare system for people with disabilities.
We know that they also plan on cutting funding to some of the sort of peripheral partners. We have really great partnerships in New York State with three universities who receive federal funding to be university centers for excellence in developmental disabilities. And we really rely on them for a lot of that development of community-based partnerships for training of healthcare providers, and for a lot of that research. So we know that there is no funding proposed for them in this next fiscal year.
There's also been talk about cutting funding for the Protection and Advocacy Agency. So in New York State, that's Disability Rights New York that provides legal advocacy and representation for people with disabilities and the Centers for Developmental Disabilities. Each state has a small organization that's federally funded to give out grants for topics related to developmental disabilities. So in New York State, that's the Center for Disability Services run by executive director, Kristin Proud, and they would potentially be looking at a $4 million loss of federal funding to roll out those initiatives and programs.
So there's a lot that we're concerned about keeping an eye on. The bill itself doesn't directly propose or make cuts to my service system, but we know that as you chip away at the edges, it impacts us. New York State can't possibly weather a $13.5 billion Medicaid cut without looking at where we need to drive down spending in all areas of Medicaid.
Emyle Watkins: The Trump administration, the Senate Majority Leader and the House Speaker are all pushing for this bill to be voted on in full before July 4th.
You've been listening to The Disabilities Beat from Buffalo Toronto Public Media. You can listen to the Disabilities Beat segment on demand, view a transcript in plain language description for every episode on our website at etpm.org. I'm Emyle Watkins. Thanks for listening.
