Reflections on the first 100 days: We are more prepared and determined than ever
The 100 days since President Trump returned to office were as punishing and relentless as we expected and more. The Trump administration’s agenda has a cruelly simple core: to dismantle government programs in order to enrich the powerful while punishing the most underserved. His administration has implemented a “shock-and-awe” strategy, flooding the area with executive orders and budget proposals. They have also taken agency actions to create confusion and fear. This is deliberate. They want us feeling overwhelmed. They didn’t take into account the fact that we are not intimidated. We’re prepared and more determined than ever.
Medicaid is under direct attack, not because it’s broken, but because it works. Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which is related to Medicaid, provide quality health coverage to more than 80 million people across the United States. Without Medicaid, millions of low-income adults and children, pregnant women, older adults and people with disabilities would not be able to access health care. It helps them get the health care that they need to stay healthy.
But President Trump and his congressional ally are rushing to pass legislation which will require deep structural cuts to Medicaid to give tax breaks for corporations and billionaires and pour billions of dollars into militarized immigration. The President’s congressional allies are reviving budget gimmicks that will terminate Medicaid coverage by cutting state funding, imposing work requirements, ending taxes on providers which help fund the state’s share of Medicaid expenditures, or a combination of these proposals. These reckless changes, regardless of how they are implemented, will strip millions of care and throw our healthcare system into chaos. Simply put, Medicaid cannot be cut without affecting people. The attacks on people are not limited to Medicaid. The Trump administration is systematically targeting “woke ideology” and DEI in all sectors of public and private life, a deliberate strategy to marginalize, intimidate, and silence. The Trump administration has also targeted the infrastructure that supports a just and free society. Nonprofits working on immigration issues, reproductive rights, environmental issues, and racial justice have been targeted or threatened with politically-motivated audits, investigations, or funding cuts
. The National Health Law Program is leading the fight to defend Medicaid
. We are on Capitol Hill educating members of Congress about Medicaid’s critical role in their states and districts, including Medicaid’s role in supporting
rural health systems, health care in schools, and local economies
and the
workforce. We coordinate strategy across coalitions, and support our state-based partner’s advocacy in communities nationwide. This includes California, where NHeLP, our partners, and NHeLP are rallying together to protect Medi-Cal – the nation’s largest Medicaid Program covering 15 million Californians. We are also using our communication capacity to push hard against the pernicious lie that Medicaid is wasteful and subject to fraud. There are not billions of dollars in waste to cut from Medicaid; that is unless one believes that providing health care to one in five Americans is waste.Just weeks ago, nearly 200 advocates from across the country gathered at NHeLP’s national conference. We met in person for strategizing, sharing lessons, and strengthening the bonds that keep this movement together. It was a good reminder that we’re not alone, and we won’t back down. We have hired two new attorneys to join our litigation team. We also hired two policy experts to join our federal advocacy team and a new lawyer to support our work in California. We have also added a new state partner to our network of Health Law Partnerships.This moment is hard. They want it to feel hard. The “flood zone” strategy is designed to make us want to give up. We’ve been through these storms many times before. We have endured before. We have won in the past. We will win again, because the stakes are just too high. We will not back down. We are doubling our efforts. We fight because health care is essential for the well-being and prosperity of our families, our communities, and our country. We fight because everyone deserves the chance to thrive. We fight because the future of our children is at stake.
