As the Senate works feverishly on the “big, beautiful bill,” the prospect of big Medicaid cuts has moved into the spotlight. Lawmakers are looking to take money from Medicaid and move it into other unrelated spending and tax cuts.
Congress is right to want to address America’s debt crisis. But the road to fiscal sanity does not lead through slashing a basic, commonsense program like Medicaid. Targeting our county’s healthcare and ignoring the growing mental health crisis would make our country less healthy, less prosperous and less stable. All these things would make it even harder, not easier, for our economy to outgrow our national debt in the long run.
It’s no secret that the United States is experiencing an only worsening mental health crisis. More than half of all Americans (51%) have experienced a severe mental health crisis in their own family. One in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness. Tragically, drug overdose and suicide remain leading causes of death.
Medicaid plays a huge role in addressing this crisis and stopping things from getting even worse. As the single largest payer for mental health services in the country, Medicaid covers a wide array of treatments and services — inpatient and outpatient care, prescription drugs, therapy, case management services and more. In particular, Medicaid provides access to substance use disorder services, which are critical for the approximately 50% of individuals with mental health disorders who are also combating substance abuse problems.
There is no way that Congress can drain billions and billions of dollars out of Medicaid without seriously compromising Americans’ access to crucial mental health and substance abuse treatments.
Access would decline the most for exactly the lower-income households and at-risk communities who are already more likely to face these issues. Rates of untreated mental illness and suicide will climb. Drug use and overdoses will increase. Downstream issues like crime and homelessness in our cities will get worse.
Cuts to Medicaid will impact everybody, regardless of what insurance we have or whether or not we are personally dealing with mental health struggles ourselves. Already crowded emergency rooms will become flooded with even more patients needing even more care who now have nowhere else to turn and less access to preventative care that could have nipped health problems in the bud. And even this assumes that our local hospitals will be able to stay open, which will not be the case everywhere. Medicaid is a substantial funding stream for hospitals and healthcare providers across the country that helps keep these facilities open for all the patients who depend on them. Our healthcare system is already overworked and strained for resources. Cutting Medicaid will exacerbate already existing issues. It could trigger a completely avoidable public health crisis.
Mental health touches every single community and family in America;. Now is not the time to limit access to care for our most vulnerable citizens. If anything, we need more federal support and resources for mental health treatment. Our elected officials should be focused on protecting Medicaid, not treating it as a piggy bank for other spending.
Our Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) is making Missouri proud with his courageous, outspoken commitment to protecting Medicaid from the dangerous cuts many of his colleagues are promoting. Missouri is counting on Senator Hawley to stay strong. We need Senators to follow in his footsteps and demand that Medicaid cuts be kept out of the “big, beautiful bill.” If the Senate does cut Medicaid, the consequences for everyday Americans will be big, but they won’t be beautiful.
Owner of West County Behavioral, health and psychiatry and CEO of Van Luven Enterprises
