Children’s Hospital Los Angeles president and CEO Paul S. Viviano and Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-CA) spoke out against proposed cuts included in the American Health Care Act on May 31.

Each voiced concerns over the act and the proposed federal budget, which would slash Medicaid by $800 billion over the next decade and could cause thousands of individuals to lose health coverage while increasing costs for millions more. In addition, the budget calls for cutting the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) by at least 20 percent over the next two fiscal years, jeopardizing children reliant on federal and state assistance to cover medical care, including many CHLA patients.

Rep. Tony Cardenas (right) joined Children’s Hospital Los Angeles to oppose potential health care cuts.
(photo courtesy of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles)

“At Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, our goal is to treat everyone regardless of personal circumstance,” Viviano said. “Our message is clear: The health and wellbeing of children throughout California and the nation is our highest priority and should be the highest priority of our nation. Access to health care coverage for children needs to be sustained.”

Medicaid and CHIP are critical lifelines for more than 36 million American children. In California, that includes 6.8 million covered by Medi-Cal (California’s name for Medicaid) and 2 million who access care through CHIP.

“Forty-plus percent of the human beings in the United States of America that are doing well are doing well because of Medicaid,” Cardenas said. “Those are your tax dollars, ladies and gentlemen, put to good use saving lives, providing doctors the opportunities to create miracles.”

They were joined by Cristian Mendoza, 17, a leukemia survivor from Slymar.

“I have been cancer free for three years,” Mendoza said. “I always thought ‘I can be taken care of, I have Medi-Cal, everything’s going to be all right.’ But I’m here today because the new health care bill proposed recently really threatens a lot of people, not just myself.”

Jennifer Page, whose 12-year-old son Max has a congenital heart defect, said her son was airlifted from Orange County to Los Angeles for unexpected and aggressive treatment.

“Your rainy day fund is depleted,” said Page, who described her family as upper middle class. “And for the first time ever, our medical expenses exceeded 20 percent of our income and so we qualified for a supplemental insurance.”

Max qualified for public assistance through California Children’s Services, a largely Medi-Cal funded program for families with children with severe chronic illnesses, such as cystic fibrosis, cancer and heart disease.

“I never thought in a million years we’d need it, but that’s how expensive this kind of elite care is,” Page said. “Max needed to be inpatient, with IV and antibiotics around the clock, and you don’t plan for that.”