Trump’s Tax Bill Has Major Consequences, But It Will Be Unspeakably Cruel For This Group Of Americans

Now that the Senate has passed its budget bill, the House is voting this week on taking my ability to commit to medically complex foster children away. That’s not what they’re calling it, of course, but when this legislation takes $930 billion from Medicaid, it’s going to hit foster kids waiting on families hard.

Four in 10 kids across the United States are on Medicaid, including 368,000 foster kids like mine, who are entitled to Medicaid benefits through the foster system. All those kids will hurt as a result of these cuts, but for those in the foster system, it could make the difference between finding a forever home or growing up in institutional care.

My husband Nic and I have fostered around 30 children over the last 14 years. We know how essential Medicaid benefits are for children in the foster system, nearly half of whom have special health care needs. All children in the foster system are entitled to Medicaid benefits, and for many this benefit is extended after adoption or aging out of the system in order to ensure continued health and safety.

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Medicaid has saved the life of every single foster child who has come through my doors, and it’s what made it possible to foster in the first place — and to adopt some of those foster children, with continuing benefits ensuring that we’d be able to meet their ongoing medical needs. Cuts to Medicaid would be devastating for medically complex foster children like mine across the United States.

I know this very intimately because of Ansley, my wonderful little girl who loved the color yellow, balloons and listening to music. Ansley came to us as a foster infant with complex medical issues. We later adopted her and remained her loving family until her death in 2019 at age 5. Ansley brought so much love and joy to our family during her short time with us and activated my “advocacy bone,” turning me into an advocate for medically complex children in the foster system and giving me the inspiration to keep fostering children like her.

Because of Ansley, I am a person who sees people as valuable no matter who they are. Because of Medicaid, I am able to open my home to children like Ansley, who would otherwise be too expensive for us, and most families, to care for.

Ansley wasn’t a burden, because loving a child is never a burden, but she did have complex medical needs throughout her life. Medicaid’s coverage of necessary treatments and therapies also freed up resources for us to provide her with enhanced opportunities, paying for additional services that she needed to thrive and live her best life with us.

Medicaid provides essential support that helps medically complex foster children like mine lead full lives at home in their communities, where they know love and companionship and enrich the lives of everyone they touch. Our daughter Luci, a micropreemie born at just 27 weeks, also came to us through the foster system and struggles with behavior and emotional regulation. She receives Medicaid coverage post-adoption to support her critical mental health needs, which will require lifelong assistance to manage.

Our youngest girl, Lilah, also a micropreemie who started out in the foster system, was born at 22 weeks and survived because of Medicaid. Medicaid made it possible to bring her home with us, to access oxygen at home and to receive the surgeries and other care she needed to thrive.

Members of micropreemie support groups often tell me that without Medicaid, they would have been bankrupt or financially ruined; no one expects a premature birth, and NICU stays cost millions of dollars, with medically complex preemies experiencing high health care needs for life.

Five-year-old Z, who was recently adopted after four years in our home, is hearing and vision impaired, has spastic quadriplegia, uses a feeding tube and lives with life altering effects from a traumatic brain injury. He has benefited tremendously from Medicaid coverage of his equipment, such as a Tobii Dynavox eye gaze machine, which allows him to communicate directly with us about when he’s not feeling well, which toy he wants to play with and what music he wants to play.

He has been able to introduce himself to us and access the community in a way that’s simply unreal. He can go to school with his peers and communicate with his teachers, understanding and responding to what they are teaching. This would have been unimaginable without the critical equipment that we could never have afforded on our own. Providing Z with the tools he needs to communicate has opened up his whole world, and ours.

Every child deserves this kind of access, and Medicaid makes that possible, allowing foster children with medical complexities and disabilities to find forever families instead of languishing in institutional care, be it the hospital, state facilities or nursing homes.

Without it, I would be unable to afford care for my foster children, and the children I’ve adopted through the foster system would also lose the coverage that keeps them at home, safe and loved, in their community. They could have been forced into institutions because of their medical needs, as is the case with several children we already know are waiting for adoptive homes in state facilities.

Medicaid is also crucial for family reunification, the most important goal within the foster system whenever possible. We’ve had medically complex foster placements who were able to be reunited with family members because of Medicaid; those family members were able to take those children because they knew their medical needs would be covered. They were able to get those children out of the foster system and raise them.

It would be heartbreaking for kinship placements to have to hesitate because of financial concerns.

As a foster mom, my calling is to care for medically complex children. I do not believe the cruel cuts to Medicaid in this bill are what Jesus meant when He said, “Let the little children come to me,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We are taught to take care of the sick in this world, especially children.

I pray that when my time on this Earth is done, I will be reunited with my daughter Ansley. In the meantime, I will ensure that her legacy lives on in the form of providing comfort, love and shelter to children just like her. I cannot imagine having to close our home because of our inability to afford the health costs of a terminally ill or disabled child in need of a family.

Disabled and medically complex children already suffer enough. Even one child being denied access to support for home and community living is one child too many.

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