(Another) Letter to Senator Bruce Caswell and Representative Ken Kurtz

As a free clinic in your district, serving the most vulnerable of your constituents, we urge you to support expanding and reforming Medicaid to help rein in the high cost of health care, support health care providers and give families access to quality affordable treatments and services.

As you know, our clinic serves people with little to no health insurance, many of them working citizens with families. For them, the first time they see a doctor is when they go to an emergency room, when a medical situation that was otherwise preventable and treatable has become a full-blown medical emergency. This puts their health and lives at risk, and sends health care costs for everyone else through the roof.

By expanding and reforming Medicaid, we can help more than 450,000 people in Michigan get frontline quality health care. They can see family physicians. They can get regular check-ups. They can get treatment plans for a wide range of manageable diseases such as diabetes and many others. All of these add up to a healthier Michigan.

Every year, hospitals across Michigan lose nearly $2 billion in uncompensated care treating uninsured and underinsured people. Helping more people get access to care through Medicaid will significantly reduce these cost burdens, allowing hospitals to improve outcomes, add jobs and support the local economy.

Without Medicaid expansion, hospitals will see even further cuts to Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates, exacerbating an already difficult health care environment. Without expansion, we risk weakening both the hospitals and their ability to provide medical care, and worsening the health-care crisis in Michigan.

Free clinics are the ones who experience and, to the extent we can with very limited resources, address this crisis every day. We see what lack of access to medical care, treatment and services do to people and our communities.

For all these reasons, Medicaid expansion is the best way forward for Michigan’s future, and that’s why we urge you to support this critical health care policy opportunity.