Marion County residents feel pinch of impending GOP tax cuts

FAIRMONT — Monongah resident Amy Davis is on disability and Medicaid.

But with the changes to Medicaid proposed by House Republicans in Washington, it’s not herself she’s worried about.

“I worry for my oldest daughter,” Davis said. “She is on the spectrum, has complex PTSD and suffers from a lot of mental health issues. She’s 21 and is currently trying for disability but if she’s denied, there’s no way she can work even one hour. She has a lot of meds and doctors appointments.”

The reason Davis is worried about how many hours her daughter can put into work is because House Republicans put forward the strictest work requirements they’ve ever advanced as part of President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax and spending bill. The bill passed the House of Representatives late Wednesday night. Republicans have beaten the drum consistently about “waste, fraud and abuse” when defending their policy choices, but critics say the changes are there to prevent the poorest citizens from accessing health care.

“The purpose is to basically force people off of Medicaid,” Mindy Holcomb, health care organizer with the West Virginia Citizen Action Group, said. “The work requirement they are imposing in this bill has been tested in other states. If you look at the data from Arkansas, it had no impact on their state economy. It had no impact on their jobs report. It just kicked people off of their health insurance.”

According to the bill’s text, the bill requires recipients to complete 80 hours of work, community service, or education on a monthly basis, or 20 hours a week. Recipients must also maintain compliance with the requirements for one or more consecutive months between coverage terms. States aren’t allowed to waive the requirements but may provide exemptions for individuals experiencing short term hardships. While the bill initially started the work requirement in 2029, a late night revision Wednesday moved the start date up to 2026.

Holcomb pointed out that in Arkansas, all work requirements did was put difficult and time consuming paperwork on both the people who were eligible for Medicaid and the people who were responsible for processing the paperwork.

Trump’s bill also raises copays for Medicaid recipients who are 100% above the poverty line. Troy Miller, an organizer for Social Security Works, said that will cause recipients to seek less care so they don’t have to pay those copays. Social Security Works is a nonprofit that advocates for Medicare.

“This will hurt people,” he said. “That is a simple fact. Any time you’re forcing people to either pay more or seek less care, you’ve undermined the system. And that is part of the whole design, if you ask me. Ultimately, the donor class of the people pushing these bills just want to see the whole thing privatized, so they can make lots more money that way.”

Trump’s bill pays for a massive multi-trillion tax cut for the wealthy by forcing the poorest to pay for it through health care and other social service cuts. Forbes reported that more than seven million Americans could lose Medicaid under the Republican proposal.

Miller said the tax cuts benefit mostly people who earn over $500,000 a year. However, the cutoff for the top 1% in West Virginia is $420,000. So even most of the top 1% in the state wouldn’t receive the benefits in exchange for the massive tax cuts. Miller added West Virginia is in the top end of states that receive federal dollars, a major part of which is through Medicaid. He compared West Virginia to Connecticut, which pays more in tax to the federal government than it receives in return.

“Their top 5% is above $600,000,” Miller said. “We’re getting Medicaid cuts in exchange for tax cuts for people in Connecticut. I just don’t think many people in West Virginia will think that’s a good idea.”

Data USA, a free platform that visualizes federal data, shows that when it comes to wage distribution in the state, only 1.68% make over $200,000. The vast majority of people make between $10,000 and $80,000.

The West Virginia Center of Budget and Policy estimated that the Republicans’ proposal would result in at least 65,000 West Virginians losing their health coverage. The nonprofit also pointed out that exemptions within the bill do not adequately protect people with disabilities or chronic health conditions. Obtaining disability is already hard enough, Miller said, with it taking up to three tries to apply before receiving disabled status for most people.

Republican House Reps. Carol Miller and Riley Moore voted for the cuts. In a statement to MetroNews, Moore didn’t address any concerns raised over people losing health care, instead he said 77 million Americans demanded generational change in November. It’s not clear if this is the generational change those voters meant.

Moore in a statement to another publication said House Republicans cut spending by $1.5 trillion. However, the Congressional Budget Office said the deficit will rise by $3.6 trillion because of the bill. Holcomb said Moore avoided the delegation from her organization when they traveled to Washington, D.C. to speak to the congressman about their concerns.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., addressed the changes to Medicaid in her weekly media briefing on Thursday.

“We’ve got spending problems here in Washington,” she said. “We have issues that I think we need to curb the growth more on. I wouldn’t say cut, I would say curb the growth and one of these is Medicaid. It’s a difficult issue, because 28% of West Virginians are on Medicaid. I want to protect those benefits and the president has said to protect those benefits. So the House has some ideas, we’ll probably have some more ideas over here in the Senate.”

Capito said the bill isn’t something she would write, but that’s why the next step is to bring it to the Senate and work on it there through their process. Capito also said she supported the work requirements in the bill.

Penny Blackshire, 57, is a Barrackville resident with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. She originally had access to both Medicare and Medicaid, but after being reduced to Medicare Part A and Part B, her finances are collecting mounting medical bills. She gets chemo every week, which is $30,000 a bag. Despite that, Blackshire still works 2 days a week. However, 16 hours is under the 20 hour threshold needed for Medicaid under the proposed bill.

It’s already a headache for Blackshire managing her health coverage. She’s received conflicting messages, being told to continue working but also being told to quit to receive full Medicaid. She’s been told they want to take away her disability status because as someone who works twice a week with stage four cancer, she’s able bodied. If the bill passes, Blackshire’s life would become even more difficult. She already receives a balance of $2,000 for her treatment with what coverage she does have. Additional copays could make that number more unmanageable. If she lost her coverage completely, she would have to give up treatment.

“I think they’re trying to cut out the underprivileged,” Blackshire said. “They’re trying to make it impossible for people to live. I worked my whole life. I had good insurance. But I lost it because I couldn’t maintain hours at work. Mike (Caputo) helped me get on Medicaid and Medicare, but when the Republicans took over, I couldn’t get Medicaid anymore. I was like, why am I getting these bills? What’s going on?”

Troy Miller said the true goal of these changes is to destabilize the system by messing with the administration of these services, which generates a lack of trust in the program, that will lead to a death spiral for the program. “It’s death by a thousand cuts,” he said.

“We should have no qualms about providing these as a society,” he said. “But people are like, ‘you just want to redistribute wealth.’ Well, this is wealth redistribution. It’s just upwards and outwards.”

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