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Opinion

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Peter Manzo

Open Letter to CA Congressional Delegation: Pass Legislation to Protect California Dreamers and DACA

Peter Manzo
Tuesday, 12 September 2017
Opinion Advocacy

Sept. 8, 2017

To: Members of California’s congressional delegation

RE: Pass Legislation to Protect California Dreamers and DACA

Dear Majority Leader McCarthy, Minority Leader Pelosi, Senator Feinstein, Senator Harris, and all members of California’s congressional delegation:

This week the White House announced its decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects approximately 242,339 young people from deportation in California. Nationwide, the DACA program is a lifeline for nearly 800,000 young immigrants who came to this country as children. We urge you to take action to protect them by passing legislation to protect their status.

Tags:
DACA Immigration California
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Peter Manzo

Hard to Reconcile with Better Care

Peter Manzo
Friday, 23 June 2017
Press Releases Opinion Advocacy Health

The “Better Care Reconciliation Act” released by the Senate Majority today is anything but better.  It will degrade health coverage for everyone, and deprive it altogether from millions of Americans. In fact it appears to be worse than the American Health Care Act passed by the House last month.

America’s modern health system has been built around employer-sponsored health insurance.  According to Forbes, 170 million Americans receive health coverage through plans sponsored by their employers. The BCRA will require most of those 170 million to pay more for worse health care coverage, by eliminating requirements for essential health benefits, allowing states the option of instituting life time caps and charging higher premiums to those over 50. In fact it eliminates the requirements for large employers to even offer health coverage and makes it impossible for small businesses to afford decent coverage if they so desire.

Medicaid is a safety net for those who are still suffering from the recession, have lost their jobs, or have low paying jobs without benefits. In the Central Valley, for example, the oil and agriculture industries have dropped tens of thousands of jobs in the past decade, and these families have no choice but to rely on Medicaid as they search for new work or training opportunities.

Children in low-income families – nearly one of every two children in the US – and people with disabilities also depend on Medicaid, which is funded in partnership between the federal government and state governments. In all, 65 million Americans are covered under Medicaid, including 37 million children; in California, Medicaid covers 14 million people, including 1.4 million children.

BCRA cuts $800 Billion from Medicaid, and these drastic cuts will force states to kick millions off the program.  California stands to lose over half of its in federal funding for Medicaid ($15 billion (58%)), which would be impossible to backfill with tax increases and will mean millions will lose insurance.

Many people may not be aware that Medicaid is what allows seniors to access long-term care without imposing a burden on their families, on their children, and grandchildren. According to AARP, about 65 percent of nursing home residents are supported primarily by Medicaid, and Medicaid pays for 45 percent of the total nursing home bill.  With block grants or per capita caps, it is our parents and grandparents that will suffer.
BCRA’s cuts likely would lead to severe financial hardship on millions of families, including having to quit work to care for elderly parents, and risk losing their own health coverage and financial security.

And for low-income children, the BCRA’s proposed Medicaid cuts would be a disaster. 95 percent of children in America now have health insurance coverage, 97 percent in California. In California, we’ve gone from 1.2 million uninsured kids down to less than 100,000. More than 37 million children are enrolled in Medicaid, compared to 1 million in the health exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act. There simply is no way to shield our nation’s most vulnerable children from Medicaid cuts of this magnitude.

The BCRA violates President Trump’s promises on the campaign and in office not to cut Medicaid, and his promise after inauguration to “come up with a new plan that’s going to be better health care for more people at a lesser cost.” The BCRA’s devastating block grants and per capita caps upon the Medicaid program are harsher than even the House bill, which President Trump himself referred to as ‘mean.’  We agree.  The Senate’s decision to exempt disabled children from imposed caps only highlights how harmful BCRA is to kids. Per capita caps and block grants are bad for everyone.. This bill asks low and middle-income people (and their employers) to spend more for less coverage, and makes it impossible for states to respond to population growth, epidemics, medical advances and treatment, or emergencies like earthquakes and fires.

As damaging as the bill’s substantive provisions are, the Senate has been reckless and irresponsible in handling such a vital, life and death issue. The Affordable Care Act, which the BCRA is meant to dismantle, was debated in three House committees and two Senate committees, and was subject to hours of bipartisan debate that allowed for the consideration of 130 amendments from both sides of the aisle. The BCRA is likewise a major piece of legislation, yet it was drafted in secret, with none of the Senates’s “regular order” of committee hearings and processes. In 2009, the full Senate debated the health care bill for 25 straight days before passing it on Dec. 24, 2009.  We expect 20 hours of debate total on this bill.

The BCRA will not not produce better care for anyone; instead, it will destabilize the health insurance markets, including private insurance sponsored by employers; cause risk pools to be older and sicker; cause uncertainty for hospitals and health systems across the country; require middle- and low-income families to pay more for worse coverage; and kick millions of people off insurance altogether. This is bad policy, plain and simple.

Written with Judy Darnell, Vice President for Public Policy, and Danielle Kilchenstein, Health Coverage Project Administrator

Tags:
ACA Health Care Obamacare “ Better Care Reconciliation Act ”
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Peter Manzo

Bleeding the Patient - Projected Impact of the AHCA

Peter Manzo
Tuesday, 21 March 2017
Opinion Advocacy Health Uncategorized

United Way’s ask of President Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and his Congressional colleagues is that any changes to our healthcare laws must improve on existing healthcare coverage, protect Medicaid from harmful structural changes and leave intact all consumer protections for all Americans. It may sound like a tall order, but it can be done, and that is the task for Speaker Ryan, President Trump and other Congressional leaders who have vowed to replace the Affordable Care Act with something better.

With that in mind, let’s look at the GOP’s proposed new health insurance law, the “American Health Care Act” (AHCA), sponsored by House Speaker Paul Ryan and championed by President Trump.

Tags:
United Way ’s President Trump House Speaker Paul Ryan Congressional colleagues changes
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Peter Manzo

Which Way Now for Health Reform?

Peter Manzo
Saturday, 11 March 2017
Opinion Health

Now that Speaker Paul Ryan has introduced the Republican proposal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (a pair of bills referred to as the American Health Care Act), it would be instructive to look back to 2009, the last time health insurance reform was on the table, to see what directions health reform may take.

Back then, 49.9 million Americans, or about 1 in 6, were uninsured; health care premiums for Americans who had coverage were increasing by double digits every year, and Americans paid more for health care and got worse results than citizens in any country we would consider our peers.

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Peter Manzo

Diverging Fortunes: The Middle Class, the 1% and Philanthropy

Peter Manzo
Tuesday, 11 October 2016
Opinion Advocacy

In the next few weeks, The Chronicle of Philanthropy will release “The Philanthropy 400,” their annual ranking of the largest charities in the U.S. For at least the last two years, The Chronicle of Philanthropy has predicted that Fidelity Charitable, one of a handful of large commercial donor-advised fund vehicles, will pass United Way on the Chronicle’s list as the largest US charity, and 2016 may be the year that actually happens.

You might shrug and wonder, why should it matter? What’s the difference between the number one spot and number 5, or 10, or 15, among the hundreds of thousands of U.S. charities?

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