July 14, 2025 Editor, The News-Gazette: On July 2, the following post about the Republicans’ Big Ugly Bill appeared on Augusta Health’s Facebook page: “URGENT: Medicaid Cuts Threaten Our Healthcare System “The Senate just passed a bill that could strip 11.8 million people of health insurance and cut nearly $1 trillion in hospital Medicaid reimbursements. These are the largest Medicaid cuts in history, and will disproportionately impact rural and medically underserved communities, such as ours, and drastically increase uncompensated care for hospitals, like Augusta Health.
“Use your voice. Send a message to your Congressional representatives and urge them to reject the bill in its current form.”
Note that this post (which for whatever reason has been deleted) did not come from “alarmist” partisan Democrats but from the management of a hospital on which so many of us depend.
A lot of people did send such a message to Congressman Ben Cline. But on July 3 Cline and all but two other House Republicans voted to approve the Senate version and send it to President Trump for his signature.
Cline called it “a great victory for American families.”
Please don’t fall for the Republican lie that cutting Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion will only affect able-bodied childless workingage adults who are too lazy to work for a living. Of the more than 170,000 of Cline’s constituents who depend on Medicaid, I can assure you that few if any are in that category. Many workers whose jobs don’t provide health insurance depend on Medicaid to protect themselves and their families.
And a message to Ben Cline: If you think this is all behind you, think again.
You own this bill now -- every feature that threatens the health, lives and well-being of your constituents. GENE ZITVER Lexington
