Last week, Congressman Gabe Vasquez highlighted the devastating impacts of the GOP Tax Scam, which threatens to rip away health care from nearly 40,000 people in New Mexico’s Second Congressional District. The bill passed the House with overwhelming Republican support, and the Senate is currently debating even more drastic spending cuts.
At a series of district events centering patients and hospital providers who rely on Medicaid, Vasquez explained how House Republicans’ Big, Ugly bill “is an all-out assault on Medicaid. It proposes nearly $800 billion in cuts, cuts that would fall hardest on working families and rural communities, and on our tribes and pueblos.”
In case you missed it…
Albuquerque Journal: Senate’s budget proposal could push New Mexico hospitals to close their doors
- [At a roundtable Wednesday with Rep. Gabe Vasquez] Carlos Zuniga unpacked bottles of prescription medications from his backpack.
- “Without Medicaid, I wouldn’t be able to get the things I need to just live a regular life, for my pain management. This is just some of the medication that I need to take four or five times a day to be able to function and have a productive life,” Zuniga said.
- In 2022, he received surgery to treat a spinal column injury at the University of New Mexico Hospital, which he likely wouldn’t have had without Medicaid…Now Zuniga lives on a fixed income of $900 a month, and Medicaid pays for the expensive prescriptions he needs to manage his health, including chronic pain.
- Medicaid helped him get a housing voucher, and he believes access to steady pain management helped him get a high school diploma. Zuniga said he’s working toward becoming a peer support worker.
- The budget bill working its way through Congress could cause five to eight hospitals in New Mexico to close their doors…”For some of them, I think it would be a slow, sad, painful decline.” – Julia Ruetten, the New Mexico Hospital Association
- In part, hospitals may be forced to shrink because an estimated 10 million to 15 million people would lose Medicaid coverage if expanded work requirements pass.
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