On Thursday, concerned North Carolinians assembled outside of Sen. Thom Tillis’ Raleigh office to call on the senator to protect Medicaid from Republicans’ proposed cuts.
The press conference featured current and future health care professionals as well as community activists who have experience working with Medicaid, a program that provides affordable health care to over 2.6 million working-class, elderly, and disabled North Carolinians.
“Every single shift, I treat patients who rely on Medicaid to access health care. So many of my patients praise Medicaid for allowing them to focus on their health, rather than worrying about medical bills or fighting with private insurance companies,” Nathan Foster, a Master of Public Health student at UNC, read from a fellow student’s letter addressed to Sen. Tillis. “North Carolinians deserve health care whether or not individuals within the government choose to care about them.”
Congressional Republicans have been advancing the MAGA budget blueprint through the House and Senate. The budget calls for slashing $2 trillion from several essential programs, including $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid. If these budget cuts are approved by the US Senate and signed into law by President Trump, North Carolina stands to lose $27 billion in federal health care funding, and hundreds of thousands of people could lose their health care coverage.
“Now is not the time to scale back access to healthcare. Now is the time to bolster our
commitment to ensuring that every person in our community has access to the life-saving
services they need and deserve,” Mabek Mvuendyi, a Master of Public Health Policy and Management student at UNC, read from a fellow peer’s letter addressed to Sen. Tillis. “Cutting or limiting Medicaid will not just impact numbers on a spreadsheet—it will cost lives.”
MAGA Republicans have quickly fallen in line to support these cuts. Every North Carolina Republican in the US House voted for the budget resolution, sending the legislation to the US Senate for further debate.
Senator Tillis has endorsed Trump’s budget plan without directly addressing the proposed cuts to Medicaid. He reposted a statement from the Senate GOP that applauded the House budget resolution, celebrating its cuts to “wasteful spending.”
Tillis has an extensive legislative record of opposing affordable health care measures. He spearheaded the blocking of Medicaid expansion when he was NC Speaker of the House, and repeatedly voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act while in the US Senate.
It was just over a year ago that North Carolina expanded Medicaid coverage after more than a decade-long fight. Now those 630,000 North Carolinians who recently gained coverage – and all 2.6 million North Carolinians on Medicaid – are at risk of losing their health insurance.
“Senator Tillis and his allies in the Senate and House hope to lay the blame elsewhere,” said Alexandra Sirota, Executive Director of the NC Budget and Tax Center.
“But we know that Senator Tillis has the power to stop these cuts now before they ripple through our state and our daily lives, affecting whether North Carolinians can receive medical care, whether the nearest hospital can serve our families, whether people in our community can afford healthy meals, and whether we can keep our jobs.”
This is the second event in a month where health care professionals have gone to Tillis’ office to protest cuts to Medicaid. The first event featured union nurses in Hendersonville, who carried a large check for $19.4 billion. Nurse Molly Zenker said the check symbolized the Medicaid funding that North Carolina is at risk of losing if Congress extends President Donald Trump’s tax cuts.
