Good morning!

The days of summer are nearing an end, and we are gearing up for the fight ahead of us this fall to ensure that Medicaid is protected from cuts in the Super Committee process. Please find below a sign-on letter to the co-chairs of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. The letter urges the Committee members to protect health care coverage for America’s most vulnerable families, especially those who depend on the Medicaid program for their lifeline, as they consider how best to balance the budget.

To sign on, please email Angela Shubert at ashubert@familiesusa.org by Thursday, September 8. Please include the full name of your organization as you would like it to appear on the letter.

You can also see a copy of the letter here.

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Dear Senator Murray, Congressman Hensarling, and Members of the Committee:

As you begin your work on the new deficit reduction committee, we urge you to protect health care coverage for America’s most vulnerable families, especially those who depend on the Medicaid program for their lifeline. Medicaid allows people with disabilities to live independently at home and enables low-income children and their families to see a doctor. Medicaid is the largest source of nursing home and long-term care for seniors.

When considering how best to bring our budget in balance, we urge you to consider the following:

• Cutting federal Medicaid funding merely shifts costs to states and families. With less federal dollars, states will have to cut benefits or eligibility or reduce provider payments – all of which hurt beneficiaries’ access to care and pass costs onto families. Shifting costs to families will do nothing to bring down costs in the health system overall.

• The current Medicaid program is already lean, with little fat to cut. Eligibility standards are very low; in 42 states, adults without dependent children are ineligible for coverage even if they are literally penniless. And the cost of providing Medicaid is lower than private coverage. The average per person cost of serving an adult on Medicaid is 20 percent less than under private insurance; for children in Medicaid or CHIP, costs are 27 percent less. In addition, Medicaid has done a better job than private insurance at controlling cost increases. From 2000 to 2009, average annual per person cost increases in Medicaid were 4.6 percent. In contrast, for the same period, annual increases in per person national health costs were 5.9 percent and the annual growth rate for employer sponsored insurance premiums was 7.7 percent.

• Cutting the Medicaid program would undermine the Affordable Care Act’s historic health coverage expansion. If the Medicaid program were cut back, the crucial Medicaid eligibility expansion would be in jeopardy of being delayed or eviscerated. In turn, the tax credit subsidies for moderate-income families to purchase health coverage through the exchanges would be at risk. It would be difficult to provide subsidies for moderate-income families while people with much lower incomes experience delays or denials of Medicaid coverage.

The American people want deficit reduction solutions that are balanced. According to a poll conducted by Kaiser Family Foundation in May, fully 60 percent of Americans want to keep the Medicaid program as is and only 13 percent would support large cuts to Medicaid. We therefore urge you to protect the Medicaid program from harmful cutbacks.