West Virginians will be in a world of pain if Congress guts Medicaid

Dan Ronneberg went to the emergency room thinking he had appendicitis. Turns out he had liver cancer and needed a liver transplant.   

Ronneberg, president of AFSCME Local 1653 (District Council 20), traveled to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore to get the procedure done. His local hospital in Charles Town, West Virginia, told him it didn’t have the resources to handle it.  

Ronneberg, a regulatory analyst with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), is worried about the level of care West Virginians receive from hospitals in their state. That’s because many hospitals in his rural state rely on Medicaid to stay open.  

The “big, beautiful bill” that the House passed and the Senate is considering this week will gouge hundreds of billions of dollars out of Medicaid and other lifesaving programs. All this to give billionaires even bigger tax cuts.  

Additionally, if passed, the budget would grant massive tax cuts for billionaires while taking away resources from America’s most vulnerable families, including in West Virginia.   

“When you talk about somebody like Elon Musk, he’s got more money than he could possibly spend in an entire lifetime,” Ronneberg said. “So he doesn’t really need more tax breaks. He needs to pay his fair share. Other billionaires need to pay their fair share.”  

Ronneberg visited Capitol Hill this week on an urgent mission. He came to share his health story, particularly with West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, and to persuade lawmakers to reject the budget bill.  

He pointed out that the budget bill would wreck Medicaid, the food assistance program known as SNAP, and other public services West Virginians need and deserve.  

Ronneberg’s local represents 2,000 FAA employees. They are already worried about their jobs due to indiscriminate cost-cutting by Musk and his cronies in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. But Ronneberg loves his job and its vital mission to keep the flying public safe. 

And he deeply loves Charles Town, the community he now calls home. He lives on a property with 80 fruit trees and commutes to Washington by commuter train.  

It sounds idyllic, but Ronneberg has experienced firsthand the crisis in rural health care.  

This liver cancer survivor now requires dialysis and awaits a kidney transplant. As it is, he’s forced to travel out of state because local hospitals lack the resources to handle complex care.   

“I’m fortunate to have federal health insurance and the ability to travel. But I shouldn’t have to, and neither should anyone else in West Virginia,” Ronneberg said. “This is a life or death situation for many West Virginians.”    

West Virginians are at risk of losing $5.74 billion in Medicaid funding. There were 522,000 adults and children enrolled in West Virginia Medicaid as of May. Three in 10 live in a rural area, and one in five have three or more chronic conditions. Medicaid covers nearly half of all births, and 77% of nursing home residents.   

Having grown up dirt poor in rural Michigan, Ronneberg can relate to many West Virginians who need Medicaid for their health care and SNAP to eat.   

Ronneberg wants to see more health care investments in his adopted state, not less.  

“When you look at the relative wealth of this area, Pennsylvania, Virginia, they have some good standards of living. You look at West Virginia, which is right next door, there is a huge income gap,” Ronneberg says. “There is a huge gap in terms of education. West Virginia suffers in a lot of ways.”