Charleston Gazette-Mail
Plenty of reports and opinion pieces have been circulating in the news media in West Virginia regarding looming cuts to Medicaid in the congressional spending plan that will facilitate extended tax cuts for the wealthy.
Many West Virginians already have difficulty accessing and affording health care, as represented in the oft-used anecdote of choosing between paying for vital medication or paying for equally vital food or housing. Consider the bill’s cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and addition of more red tape to get those benefits, and the bill becomes a two-pronged assault on a state that is among the poorest in the nation.
Of course, these cuts — which certainly seem deeply unpopular among the public — aren’t just a problem for West Virginia.
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, faced a hostile crowd at a town hall late last week, finding herself on the defensive and trying to explain that cuts to Medicaid and SNAP would only affect those who are fraudulently receiving benefits (a dubious argument the crowd clearly didn’t buy.)
When a crowd member shouted that the cuts would end up causing deaths, Ernst flippantly replied “Well, we are all going to die, so, for heaven’s sakes.”
