Letter: Hands Off Our Health and Healthcare 

The Republican administration is gutting not only healthcare, which exists to maintain our health, but also the health of our nation, which will affect individuals in multiple ways. 

The new administration began with “reviews” of the Federal Emergency Management System (FEMA), the CDC, NIH, and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) stopped weekly communications with medical providers. Ultimately, the reviews led to significant reductions in employees and the end of medical research in critical areas such as cancer and infectious disease. Now, DHHS under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been gutted. FEMA and the CDC may well be shuttered. 

Closing the CDC will disrupt medical practice and care, but discarding FEMA is an example of how changes to government agencies will adversely affect the health of our nation because, after a disaster, pollution and disease are likely. Increased cost of living results in less food, clothing, and shelter. Cuts to the environmental protection agency result in rising pollution and climate change. Poor and rural communities are at higher risk for resulting diseases than suburban and more affluent communities. 

Considering Medicare and Medicaid, which have provided health insurance for our elderly, disabled, and those whose life circumstances limit healthcare access, the administration continues to say that there will be no cuts to services. 

However, Senator Cassidy (LA-R) described cuts to Medicaid and Medicare that will be made to administrative services. Whether cuts are to administrative services or restrictions on direct care, the effect is less access, less care, and increased confusion. Millions will be affected. Any administrative cut to these services is likely to increase wait times at hospitals and clinics, decrease staff, disrupt scheduling, affect billing services, and slow reimbursement. Medical facilities may not survive. Care that is slower or inefficient equals less access and less care. 

Changes to Medicare and Medicaid will result in downstream economic changes due to health care cuts. Employees who lose their jobs will negatively affect the economy of their families and communities. Job losses will extend to the families that must now stay home to care for their elderly or disabled loved ones because nursing homes have closed. The economic impact will be severe. 

The Republican administration plans to funnel cost savings into billionaire tax cuts, military spending, and the deportation of ALL Immigrants, criminal, illegal, and legal, as well as funding border efforts. 

Communicating our opposition to these brutal changes is essential. Protests like the recent “Hands Off” gatherings across the country demonstrate that people are angry and

upset. Our next step as we continue to protest is that we, the people, must decide what we want to see for our personal health, our nation’s health, and our health care. It is up to us to design institutions that improve our lives and give everyone an equal chance to remain healthy. 

We must insist that any change to our institutions and services develops in a transparent, moral and unscrupulous way.

Sincerely,

Marita Florini, DNP

Endicott, N.Y.