Congressman Paul Tonko visited Albany's Whitney Young Health Center on Friday, saying the Republican-controlled Congress is considering massive cuts to Medicaid.
Tonko met with staff and leadership as he toured the non-profit facility.
Afterward, the Democrat from the 20th district sat down with reporters. He says Medicaid is vitally important to providing quality, affordable healthcare.
Tonko says a quarter of the population are Medicaid beneficiaries, and he warned that Republicans who control Congress intend to cut up to $2.5 trillion in federal Medicaid funding. He says that would hurt community health centers like Whitney Young, which serve everyone, regardless of their insurance status.
"In New York state alone, Medicaid provides coverage to nearly 7 million people, including 44% of all children, 49% of new moms and their newborns, and 64% of people living in nursing homes in the state that rely on the program," Tonko said. "Medicaid is also the single largest payer for behavioral health services, so that any cuts to Medicaid would be gutting access to health care for mental health and substance use disorders."
Tonko says he voted against Medicaid cuts last week in the first Budget Committee markup of this term.
Whitney Young Chief Medical Officer Dr. Deb Vasquez: "One of the things that we know from our population is, if you look at, you know, at least 50% if not more, of our patients come from communities where they struggle with a lot of other challenges that that interfere with their ability to take good care of their health."
Tonko says Republicans including President Trump have delivered mixed messages about the program, and he says the president and top adviser Elon Musk have created a "culture of fear."
"Maybe it would have been nice for Presidents Trump and Musk to come to Congress and work with that budget plan that we had that would reauthorize the health centers and fund them appropriately,” Tonko said.
Whitney Young CEO David Shippe says cuts to Medicaid could lead to loss of staff as employees seek more stability.
“I have never seen the workforce issues as challenging as they are today in healthcare, particularly with clinicians coming out of training and trying to attract them in an environment like this, and when the funding is as unstable as many other things are, it just really impacts their confidence that they have in us as an employer to continue to do this work,” said Shippe, who believes if the cuts go through, community health centers like Whitney Young would no longer be able to see every patient. He adds there's only so much they can do when they are often the only provider accepting patients who have no insurance. And if worse comes to worse?
“As a not for profit, you always try and squirrel a little bit away that you can have a rainy day. And I've seen rainy days in my career over the years, and sometimes they last for a few days. Sometimes they last for months. I think I lived through one government shutdown years back that did have an impact, because there just wasn't anything flowing. So we have, you know, we have tried to put something away for that. But we can't last forever,” Shippe said.
The Senate passed a $340 billion budget package early Friday as the House works on its own funding proposal.
