President Trump’s Proposed Federal Budget Harms the Health of Baltimoreans (Center Maryland)

Thursday May 25th, 2017

The federal budget proposal released on Tuesday by President Trump cuts life-saving services and will harm the health and well-being of hundreds of thousands of Baltimoreans. It will particularly affect the following individuals:

Seniors: One hundred thousand Baltimore City residents are over the age of 60, and 1 in 6 of these residents live below the poverty line. Cuts to Medicaid—which covers services that Medicare does not—could leave these seniors without prescription drugs, glasses, and hearing aids. The budget also makes cuts to essential programs like nursing home care and Meals on Wheels, which provides more than 187,000 meals to Baltimore older adults in their homes in each year.

Children: Eighty thousand children in Baltimore depend on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for medical care. By cutting Medicaid, removing the enhanced federal match rate for CHIP, and capping reimbursement for CHIP services, the proposed budget will limit the ability of children to get basic health services such as immunizations and treatment for asthma.

Read entire op-ed.

Related Stories

Lead poisoning cases fell 19 percent in Baltimore last year, even as more children tested for exposure (Baltimore Sun)

The number of Baltimore children with lead poisoning fell 19 percent in 2017, even as more children were tested for exposure to the powerful neurotoxin.

Statewide, the number of Maryland children found to have elevated levels of lead in their blood held steady even as the number of children tested increased by 10 percent, according to a Maryland Department of the Environment report released Tuesday.

Read the entire story.

Azar Unveils Plan to Help Pregnant Patients Quit Opioids (MedPage Today)

States will get help from the federal government integrating services for pregnant and postpartum Medicaid patients with opioid use disorder under a pilot program announced Tuesday by Health and Hu

Trump declared an emergency over opioids. A new report finds it led to very little. (Vox)

To much fanfare last year, President Donald Trump ordered his administration to declare a public health emergency over the opioid epidemic. “As Americans, we cannot allow this to continue,” Trump said at the time. “It is time to liberate our communities from this scourge of drug addiction.”

When I’ve asked experts about these approaches, it’s not that any of them are bad. It’s that they fall short. For instance, Leana Wen, the former health commissioner of Baltimore (and soon-to-be president of Planned Parenthood), said that the Support for Patients and Communities Act “is simply tinkering around the edges.”

Read the entire story.

Visit the Newsroom