2017 May 2^nd

I understand that there could be some cuts in Medicaid benefits. I have two friends who are alive because of Medicaid; I have mentioned them before but now I’ll bring you up to date.

Bill and Anne are both college graduates and both in their mid-fifties; neither can work. Anne has had five—yes five--arthroscopic knee surgeries. The last two left her in intractable pain alleviated only by doses of opioids. Bill was laid off, then found it necessary to care for Anne. They lost their house, went bankrupt, began collecting food stamps and for a while lived in their car.

Anne began to collect about 700 dollars a month in supplemental Social Security. Bill found daily work setting up exhibits for conventions and then tearing them down. When he reported his earnings from that job, he lost his food stamps for a month; still they managed.

On October 20^th of 2015 Bill had a stroke. Anne recognized the symptoms, called 9/11 and then a cab so she could get to the hospital. It was an ischemic stroke so the clot-busting drug was delayed. Bill’s left brain began to swell and a craniectomy was performed to relieve the swelling. The removed skull piece was stored so that it could be replaced when the swelling went down. Bill spent several weeks in intensive care but eventually the swelling subsided and the removed bone was replaced. An infection developed and the replaced bone had to be removed again and discarded. A plastic replacement was ordered but Bill’s recovery required more time.

Anne developed breast cancer and had a mastectomy of her right breast. She decided to have reconstructive surgery and an implant. This required several additional surgeries. Even so, body fluids continued to leak from the incision for several months and recently her surgeon recommended that she have the implant removed because her body would not tolerate it.

Bill’s new plastic skull piece was not a success; it simply didn’t fit and was painful. It was removed as well. By now Bill was in a nursing home and Anne had managed to obtain a one-bedroom apartment in a building specifically modified for the elderly and handicapped. They pay a specific fraction of their income.

Bill is able to move very slowly along parallel bars and his speech progress, which had plateaued, continues to improve so that he now gets three speech therapy sessions a week. For many months his speech came in packets and did not reflect what he wanted to say. Often he could only say, “I can’t find it,” which wasn’t what he meant to say. The inability to express himself was hugely frustrating.

Now Anne returned to the hospital for gall bladder surgery. Thankfully, there were no complications Anne manages to visit Bill almost every day and she constantly encourages him to keep trying, whether it’s in his speech improvement or in his walking.

All of this, the new apartment, the thousands upon thousands of dollars in medical costs, the nursing home, all of it is the result of the generosity of the American people. What are the odds that this generosity will continue under President Trump?