As a pediatrician in rural North Carolina, I see firsthand the difference Medicaid makes in the lives of children and families every single day. It’s the inhaler that keeps a child’s asthma under control, the glasses that help them see the board at school, the vaccines that prevent serious illness. For the families I serve, Medicaid is a lifeline, helping connect them to the basic necessities they need to be able to live, work, and learn.
That’s why I’m concerned that, right now, Republican leaders in Congress are working to push through massive cuts to Medicaid — up to $880 billion or more. North Carolina’s senior U.S. Senator, Republican Thom Tillis, has supported the plans that would slash this vital program, just one year after North Carolina finally expanded it. These cuts would be devastating, especially here in rural communities where fewer employers offer health coverage and hospitals depend heavily on Medicaid reimbursements to keep their doors open.
More than 1.4 million children in North Carolina rely on Medicaid to get the health care they need to grow up healthy and strong. That’s nearly half the kids in our state. Nearly 40% of all Medicaid recipients live outside major cities — in rural areas like mine — where access to care is already limited. When Medicaid is threatened, it’s these children and their families who will feel it first and worst.
If these cuts go through, children will lose access to routine checkups, life-saving prescriptions, and preventive care. They’ll struggle to learn, fall behind in school, or even end up in emergency rooms for conditions that could have been managed early — if they can get care at all.
And it’s not just kids. Medicaid helps low-income parents, seniors, and people with disabilities get the care they need to survive. In rural communities, where jobs often don’t come with benefits, Medicaid fills the gap. If people lose that coverage, they’re not switching to a private plan — they’re going without.
The impact wouldn’t stop at patients who qualify for Medicaid. Rural hospitals, many of which are already operating on razor-thin margins, rely on Medicaid to stay afloat. If this funding disappears, more hospitals will be forced to close. That means longer drives for emergency care, fewer options for prenatal visits or surgeries, and more risk for everyone in the community — not just those on Medicaid.
Senator Tillis must understand what’s at stake. These cuts aren’t about reducing waste or balancing the budget. They’re about shifting costs from billionaires to working families. They’re about handing tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy while kids lose their inhalers, seniors lose access to medications, and rural hospitals shut their doors.
We fought hard for over a decade to expand Medicaid in North Carolina. That fight wasn’t about politics — it was about saving lives. And we succeeded. Now, more than 600,000 North Carolinians finally have access to care. If Senator Tillis supports these cuts, he’ll be taking that away.
We can’t afford to let politicians like Senator Tillis take away our health care. Not when families are working hard to get by, raise their kids, and care for aging parents in a health system that already leaves too many behind.
From blocking Medicaid expansion as Speaker of the NC House in 2013, to trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act throughout his tenure in the U.S. Senate, Senator Tillis has a long history of opposing efforts to expand health care access — but he has another chance to show where he stands. I urge him to stand with his constituents, not with wealthy donors. Protect Medicaid. Protect our rural hospitals. And most importantly, protect our kids.
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