Debbie DeWeese: Don’t cut our healthcare to give tax breaks to the rich

A bill making its way through the U.S. Senate would be devastating for the millions of people on Medicaid in North Carolina.

By Debbie DeWeese / Beacon Media

Photo by Olga Kononenko on Unsplash

I've seen from every angle just how essential Medicaid is to helping working families get by. But the bill that passed the U.S. House last week would raise healthcare costs and cause hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians to lose their healthcare coverage altogether—just to give more tax breaks to the rich. 

As the bill moves to the U.S. Senate, our own Senator Thom Tillis has positioned himself as a key swing vote and played a role earlier this month in potentially cutting even more funding from Medicaid with his position on a key Senate committee. 

We need him and all of our representatives to vote against the bill to protect our healthcare.

For a number of years, I worked with domestic violence survivors. I helped my clients get housing and signed them up for Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food assistance. Most of them were working-class people living paycheck to paycheck. As a working mom myself, I knew what that was like. My two boys, Aaron and Billie Rae, were both seriously ill when they were born, and in those early years, Medicaid helped them get the care they desperately needed.

Since then, I started volunteering with Down Home NC, a member-led group that organizes with working people in rural counties across the state and fought to expand Medicaid in North Carolina. I'm so proud we pushed lawmakers in our state to expand Medicaid.

Since the expansion in 2023, more than 650,000 people have enrolled. Many of them have healthcare for the first time in their lives. Over the years, I'd seen how important Medicaid was for working families—and how difficult it was to access. Today, roughly 1 in 4 North Carolinians, or nearly 3.1 million people, use Medicaid to cover their medications, doctors' visits, hospital stays, and home care. Almost a third of those folks are seniors.

I didn't know then that I'd be one of them one day. In 2023, after years spent helping others suffering from domestic abuse, threats from my husband forced me from my home. Suddenly, I was on my own with very little income. Thankfully, as a disabled senior, Medicaid supplements my Medicare coverage, which made it possible for me to rebuild my life at an independent living community.

Now, I'm worried that the Medicaid system will be stripped so bare that I might become a financial burden to my children, who are working hard to support themselves. The Senate Finance Committee, which Sen. Tillis sits on, released its measures to cut Medicaid that would surpass the House bill’s plans to slash $1.1 trillion from Medicaid and SNAP, just to give $1.1 trillion in tax cuts to people making over $500,000 a year.

Earlier this year, members of Down Home NC met with U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis’ staff on Zoom, including me. They told us that no "deserving person” would lose coverage and that this was all about “making things more efficient.” They pointed to the so-called work requirements in the bill.

I wasn't fooled by their slick talk—and you shouldn't be either. These new restrictions will effectively be a job loss penalty. Whenever someone loses their job, they’ll also lose their healthcare. Additionally, by forcing states to verify that recipients are working every month, they’re hoping to bury folks in so much paperwork and red tape that they won’t be able to access the healthcare they need. So much for efficiency.

As one researcher put it, these restrictions are really about "kicking people out of the program who are mostly eligible.”

As for deserving: I think about all my social work clients. They were good people looking for help when they needed it most. I think of my friend Nancy, who was a drug addiction counselor. Even after she was diagnosed with cancer, she was forced to keep working, even as she got sicker and sicker, because she couldn't afford to quit.

And I think of myself. I'm a disabled senior who has spent my whole lifetime working hard to contribute to my community.

Now, I need my community to have my back. All of us deserve a government that makes life manageable for us—instead of giving handouts to the rich.

The good news is that most North Carolinians really do care about each other. I saw that again and again in my work. I've seen it in my church. And I saw it after Hurricane Helene, when folks came together to help our neighbors recover from the storm. We need to come together again and demand that Sen. Tillis and other lawmakers stand firm against these cuts. We deserve leaders who fight for working families.

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Debbie DeWeese is an activist, former victim advocate, grandmother and dual beneficiary of Medicare and Medicaid living in High Point. She has called North Carolina home since 1972.

Debbie DeWeese headshot; Courtesy of the author