Today, the House voted in favor of major tax breaks for the ultra-rich – paid for by American taxpayers – and sacrificed our nation’s public health system in the process. Adding more than $3.3 trillion dollars to the national debt, the majority party in the U.S. House and Senate are sending their “big, beautiful bill” to President Trump to sign into law.
The House passed the Senate-backed bill 218:214, with all 212 Democrats voting against the bill and nearly all Republicans voting in favor. Two Republicans voted against the bill.
And now they’ll go back home for vacation, with the Republican majority patting themselves on the back for facilitating the largest transfer of wealth from the poor and working class to the wealthy in US history by ransacking public safety net programs.
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This is a dark day in American history and this legislation will have an unequivocal effect on people living with and vulnerable to HIV. Since the HIV epidemic began in the 1980s, Medicaid has given people access to life-saving and life-extending HIV care. Today, more than 40% of adults with HIV rely on Medicaid to cover their healthcare. And in states that have adopted Medicaid expansion, more than half of adults with HIV have gotten coverage that way. Medicaid is critical to keeping rural hospitals open and is the backbone of our entire healthcare system. Medicaid cuts of this magnitude will simply decimate our nation’s ability to end the HIV epidemic, resulting in more AIDS-related deaths and more HIV transmission.
Nevertheless, the Republican majority voted for the largest Medicaid cut in history – which will result in at least 17 million people losing their right to healthcare.
For months, we called, e-mailed, wrote letters, attended meetings, went to townhalls – and begged members of Congress to consider us when negotiating this bill. We told them the provisions would weaken our entire healthcare system and unfairly target certain communities. And that, despite their claims of waste, fraud, and abuse, those receiving Medicaid are, in fact, the ones for whom the program was intended.
Instead, they voted for many provisions, including those that would:
- make $1 trillion dollars in cuts to the Medicaid program – the biggest cuts in U.S. history.
- defund Planned Parenthood, realizing a long-held political goal, and by doing so, put in jeopardy the health and lives of the two million people who rely on this trusted provider for their healthcare.
- give an unprecedented $170 billion dollars toward the callous, violent, inhumane capture of immigrants – and a promise to wall off the U.S. border to protect against an invented boogeyman.
- saddle states with costs of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – a program that more than 42 million people rely on each month. The program keeps children and families fed with nutritious food, helps keep people out of poverty, and sustains many rural grocery stores. Shifting these costs to the states has never been done before in the history of the United States.
- impose harmful and ineffective mandatory work reporting requirements on Medicaid recipients that serve only to disenroll working Americans with administrative paperwork gimmicks. This already failed tactic will make people living with HIV more vulnerable to interruptions in their coverage due to difficulty meeting administrative burdens associated with work reporting requirements, despite the fact that many Medicaid beneficiaries living with HIV are already working.
implement new cost-sharing requirements for those who have gotten coverage through Medicaid expansion. Cost-sharing is simply out of reach for folks who are barely getting by. - destabilize the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and threaten the very existence of Medicaid expansion in some states.
We know better than most that HIV healthcare exists within an ecosystem and not outside of it. For people with HIV who rely on Medicaid, it is critical that access to HIV treatment continue without disruption. It is only through this consistency that people can maintain viral suppression and prevent future HIV transmissions. We know that destabilizing Medicaid and the ACA will put untenable pressure on other safety net programs and will block access to essential healthcare and supportive services that people living with or vulnerable to HIV need to survive and thrive.
This was a test for the majority party in the U.S. House and Senate on whether they could find their humanity, listen to their constituents, and vote against this bill. They failed.
And they’re counting on us to forget about these votes. We will not.
We are not a community that gives up or stays silent. We’ve always been in this fight and we’re taking that fight back home.
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The fight isn’t over—and we need you with us.
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