We join with members of the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD) in strongly opposing the revised Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA). While we have serious concerns about many provisions of the BCRA, including a new provision that would dramatically increase costs for people with preexisting conditions, we cannot overstate the danger facing the millions of adults and children with disabilities if the bill’s Medicaid proposals are adopted by the Senate. The bill’s imposition of a per capita cap and the effective end of the adult Medicaid expansion would cut federal support by $756 billion by 2026, decimating a program that for decades has provided essential healthcare and long term services and supports to millions of adults and children with disabilities.
Some 10 million people with disabilities and, often, their families, depend on the critical services that Medicaid provides for their health, functioning, independence, and well-being. For decades, the disability community and bipartisan Congressional leaders have worked together to ensure that people with disabilities of all ages have access to home- and community-based services that allow them to live, work, go to school, and participate in their communities instead of passing their days in institutions. Medicaid has been a key driver of innovations in cost-effective community-based care, and is now the primary program covering home and community-based services (HCBS) in the United States. Older adults and people with disabilities rely on Medicaid for nursing and personal care services, specialized therapies, intensive mental health services, special education services, and other needed services that are unavailable through private insurance.
The BCRA upends those critical supports. Per capita caps—which have nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act—would radically restructure the financing of the traditional Medicaid program and divorce the federal contribution from the actual costs of meeting people’s health care needs.
Read the full letter from the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities, and then call your senator (202-224-3121) and urge him or her to vote no on the Motion to Proceed.
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