Sample Letter to the Editor on Medicaid

Dear Editor:

When do you intend to let your readers know that Congress is poised to dismantle the Medicaid program and put 36 million low-income women and children, people with disabilities and senior citizens at risk for losing their health care? Next week, the House and the Senate will vote on the Budget Reconciliation bill. We have heard a great deal about balancing the budget and about cuts to the other "M" program -- Medicare -- but almost nothing about the Medicaid program.

As a [person living with HIV/AIDS] [AIDS advocate] [AIDS service provider], the assault on the Medicaid program has me enraged and terrified. The majority of men, women and children living with HIV/AIDS depend on the Medicaid program for their health care at some point in their illness. We depend on Medicaid for life-saving prescription drugs, physician and hospital services and home and community-based care. Medicaid is quite simply our health care safety net and without it, we will get sick sooner, burden taxpayers with high emergency room and hospital costs and die prematurely. Do the senior citizens who read your paper know that about half of the Medicaid funding is used to finance nursing home care?

The public needs the facts. States will be forced to do less with fewer dollars if Congress changes Medicaid into a block grant and sends a block grant to the states. People should be busy calling their members of Congress and Senators and telling them to vote no on shredding the health care safety net for our most vulnerable citizens. So, please, start covering Medicaid. People's lives are at stake. [Writer living with HIV/AIDS may replace the last sentence with: Not only is my life at stake, but the lives of more than half of all people with HIV/AIDS who now rely on Medicaid.]

For more information, contact:
Beth Jones
AIDS Action Council
1875 Connecticut Avenue NW #700
Washington DC 20009
202-986-1300
202-986-1345 (fax)
202-332-9614 (tty)
E-Mail: aidsaction@aidsaction.org