W.Va. Residents Visit Congress, Urging Senators To Vote Down Medicaid Cuts

Hedgesville resident Stacey Langley woke up early on the morning of June 18 for a trek to the nearby city of Martinsburg. Hours later, she found herself in the offices of West Virginia’s sitting United States senators, advocating for a program that has had a direct impact on her life.

Medicaid is a public health insurance program funded by both the state and federal governments, helping residents who are low income or disabled foot their medical bills. But Congress is currently considering roughly $700 million in cuts to Medicaid, with many Republican lawmakers arguing that a decrease in federal costs is essential to the program’s longevity.

Langley, who is both chronically disabled and visually impaired, is a Medicaid recipient herself. She worries the cuts may leave behind people in need. That is why she joined residents from across West Virginia and boarded a bus chartered by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) earlier this month. After pickups in Morgantown and Martinsburg, the bus traveled to Washington, D.C., to let residents raise concerns to their representatives directly.

“They’re setting people up to fail,” Langley told West Virginia Public Broadcasting in a staffer lunchroom just outside the U.S. Capitol complex. “We already have enough things that we’re dealing with as disabled people. This is just one more thing that makes our lives more difficult.”

A Program At A Crossroads

The changes proposed for Medicaid are folded into a wider piece of legislation dubbed by President Donald Trump as the “Big, Beautiful Bill.” Among other provisions, the bill would increase tax deductions, raise the debt ceiling and add new eligibility and work requirements to both the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid.

More than 78 million people rely on Medicaid across the United States, including over 500,000 West Virginians. But experts like Vania Leveille — senior legislative counsel at the ACLU National Political Advocacy Department — say these figures would likely decrease if the proposed Medicaid cuts are carried out.

That is because new work and eligibility requirements for the program could act as red tape, making public benefits harder to access for people in need, she said. For example, the new work requirement would mandate that enrollees prove they work 80 hours per week or are seeking a job, enrolled in school or taking on other commensurate efforts.

Leveille said that could mean residents working in the gig economy with fluctuating weekly hours could be abruptly cut off from their health insurance. Other individuals with difficulty accessing the internet could struggle with “the bureaucracy of trying to report your hours,” she added.

“It’s not just because they weren’t working,” Leveille said. “The bureaucracy of trying to report your hours — you have to get on the computer. What if your Wi-Fi is not working? What if you don’t have easy access to computers?”

Plus, Leveille said the proposed bill would require Medicaid enrollees to pay part of their medical bills through copays, shifting a greater financial burden onto those who depend on the program. She worries that could cut people off from accessing the medical services they need.

“It’s not an exaggeration: When you can’t get the health care you need… people will lose their lives,” Leveille said. “So we’re fighting as hard as we can to make sure members of Congress understand that they have to truly represent the interests of their constituents.”

Some people would be exempt from these stipulations, like enrollees with certain qualifying disabilities. But residents like Jeanne Nottingham of Jackson County worry new program requirements could spill over on enrollees who lack documentation for their disabilities, or have disabilities that do not qualify for exemptions.

That is a concern rooted in Nottingham’s own experience navigating Medicaid after a battle with kidney disease in 2009.

“I guess, on paper, I was an able-bodied adult that had constant nausea every single day. I had anemia. I had injections of Epogen for the anemia. I had blood transfusions, constant doctor’s appointments,” Nottingham said. “But technically I was not disabled.”

Residents Speak Out

Some provisions of the Big, Beautiful Bill are up in flux, especially after last weekend when the Senate parliamentarian advised that certain measures surrounding Medicaid violated Senate budget rules. That cast doubt over the future of several prospective changes to the program.

But Trump and the Senate Republican caucus have still set a goal of passing the bill from the nation’s upper legislative chamber before July 4. For residents like Langley and Nottingham, that made a visit to the Capitol feel urgent.

Since her recovery, Nottingham took on work helping other residents enroll in detox and psychiatric care. Today, she works as a care navigator in Charleston, helping others in need enroll in public benefits programs.

From her experience as both a recipient and facilitator of programs like Medicaid, Nottingham said her concerns over the proposed changes are grave.

“I see patients on the streets. I see patients come to me with no housing, no food, in really bad shape,” she said.

With help from the ACLU, the group met with staffers for Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va, and Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va. At the time of their visit, neither senator was available to meet with the residents directly.

Mollie Kennedy, community outreach director for the ACLU of West Virginia, helped coordinate the trip. She said it is one part of a recurring effort to help residents speak with their representatives face to face.

Kennedy added that protecting Medicaid is a particular rallying point for many West Virginians, because the state has a high level of dependence on the program, and already faces health care inequities.

According to a report commissioned by Democratic U.S. senators shared in a letter earlier this month, decreased enrollment in Medicaid could result in the closure of seven of West Virginia’s hospitals. Kennedy said she found that particularly troubling.

“We already have people in places where it is a very far distance for them to get medical care. There are people in the state who are very far away from a place to give birth, for example,” Kennedy said. “So, what would that mean for the communities? It would be devastating.”

In an email statement to West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Capito said she supports the bill because it would limit access to Medicaid benefits for people who “should not have been in the program to begin with, including able-bodied adults and others who “should be working.”

Capito said it marks an important effort to maintain the program long term. Meanwhile, Justice’s office did not respond to an email request for comment, but the senator has previously voted in favor of modifications to the program.

But Nottingham and other residents opposed to the cuts hope their advocacy, plus the spotlight on how Medicaid cuts could impact states like West Virginia, can make a difference to their representatives.

The Big, Beautiful Bill already passed the U.S. House of Representatives on May 22, and would need bipartisan dissent to avoid passage under the current Republican majority in Congress.

“The people that I help, it will change [Medicaid] for them. There will be so much red tape,” Nottingham said. “They don’t have an address to have papers mailed to them. They don’t have phones. They don’t have any way of even knowing there may be a paper that needs filled out.”

“They cannot keep up with that,” she continued. “Their main priority is their next meal.”