Activists with the group TakeAction Minnesota have a message for the U-S Senate as they work on their own version of the proposed American Health Care Act, President Trump’s replacement for Obamacare. Kenja Hadj-Moussa says, “As they put together the federal budget between now and October 1st, they need to protect Medicaid. The proposals right now would end Medicaid as we know it, which would decimate health care in Minnesota.” Hadj-Moussa says a quarter of a million people could lose health care in Minnesota. Republican leaders say Obamacare is driving up premiums and reducing options for patients, and must be replaced with a better system that promotes competition and consumer choice.
Hadj-Moussa says Republicans in the state budget did nothing to plan for Medicaid cuts that are coming from the federal government. She says, “They’re kicking a problem down the road, when we know that regardless of what happens with the AHCA, that the federal government is planning to cut Medicaid, and that’s billions of dollars that would [otherwise] be going to Minnesota.”