This will be my first Mother’s Day without my mom. She died earlier this year, peacefully and after a long life well lived. I learned a lot from my mother. Like how to juggle work and parenting — not always gracefully but with commitment to both. I learned the value of recycling everything from plastic baggies to leftovers to hand-me-down clothing. And I learned the importance of speaking out, volunteerism, and political activism. When I was in high school, she took me with her to a meeting of a local committee for a nuclear weapons freeze at the public library, the first of many meetings I have attended ever since. She led by example: she was an active voter and volunteer in local political organizations until almost the end of her life.
I learned a lot about caregiving as my mother’s physical and cognitive health declined. Because she had Alzheimer’s, my sisters and I had the challenging task of advocating for her when it came to end-of-life health care decisions. I am now acutely aware of the importance of asking our beloved elders about their wishes while they can still share them with us. And I am committed to sharing my own end-of-life wishes with my loved ones.
I also witnessed the incredible work of the many caregivers who supported my mother in her final years, months and days. In the nursing wing of the retirement community where she lived, direct care workers, physical therapists, and dietary aides did the difficult work of caring for my mother and many others. They did it with skill and compassion and commitment, despite the long hours and inadequate pay that are the reality for many front-line health care providers.
Towards the very end of her life, my mother had the benefit of receiving additional care from a team of hospice providers, who made the final few weeks more bearable for her and for us. I was amazed by the talent and support that the hospice team brought to the bedside. And after it was all over, I thought about how hospice care is one very concrete example of the impact that Medicaid funding has on all of us, since hospice is one of the many services that Medicaid helps fund.
It is no exaggeration to say that Medicaid provides vital services at every stage of life. Last year, 40% of births in the country were covered by Medicaid. And Medicaid is also there if people need the advanced level of care provided at skilled nursing facilities, where the program pays for 5 in 8 nursing home residents of whom 65% are women. AFSCME members who are nurses, certified nursing assistants and food service workers help provide these crucial services at nursing homes nationwide.
Medicaid pays for 57% of all home and community-based services for the disabled and elderly. Some of these services are provided by home care workers, including the members of AFSCME United Domestic Workers, whose efforts allow thousands of moms to remain in their homes and communities as they age.
Medicaid coverage is truly the difference between life and death. If Congress slashes Medicaid, more than 34,000 Americans could die annually.
Medicaid funding from the federal government has an outsized impact on state and local budgets. The federally-funded portion of Medicaid frees up state general funds to be used for other important programs. If cuts are made to Medicaid at the federal level, then states will be forced to cut other public services in order to continue providing necessary services like childbirth and end-of-life care. So even if we are not direct Medicaid recipients, we all benefit indirectly from programs Medicaid helps fund.
A few weeks ago, I received a notice from the city of Richmond, Virginia, that my mother had been removed from the voter rolls. It was one of the moments that I felt grief, because I thought about what my mother would have said and done if she had been alive and alert right now. I know one thing: she would have joined me and our AFSCME family in our call to stop cuts to Medicaid. And she would have been getting ready to cast her vote for pro-worker candidates in the elections for the governor and legislature in Virginia this fall. I’ll be out knocking on doors and fighting against the cuts in her memory.