LETTER | Don't balance budget on backs of South Dakotans with disabilities
Letter to the editor by Cole Uecker, executive director of Disability Rights South Dakota
Disability Rights South Dakota is deeply concerned that Congress may cut Medicaid funding in its budget package. Medicaid is more than health insurance; it is a lifeline for South Dakotans. With more than 128,000 South Dakotans relying on the program to live full, independent and healthy lives, protecting access to adequate and affordable healthcare has never been more important. The program covers one in 13 adults, two in 7 children, and half of all nursing home residents in our state. Cutting Medicaid would directly or indirectly affect nearly every South Dakotan.
Living with any disability often requires costly treatments, in-home care, prescription medication, and much more. Without health coverage, individuals with disabilities would face insurmountable obstacles, including skyrocketing their medical budgets, reducing their access to critical services, the inability to work independently and overall worse health outcomes. People deserve to live with dignity and independence, not be forced between paying medical bills or putting food on the table.
We encourage Sen. Thune, Sen. Rounds, and Rep. Johnson to have conversations with South Dakotans and learn more about how access to Medicaid health insurance helps the people in our communities live full lives.
Cole Uecker
Executive Director, Disability Rights South Dakota
I have been sending our representatives emails and calling for month about the possible cuts. Sen Thune responds with a very unsatisifying response that the budget has to be reduced. Face it, they don't care about the citizens, they care about keeping their jobs.
When I went back in 1990 to visit the Lebensborn orphanage in Kohren-Sahlis, I asked the young director what happened to the elderly and disabled who lived in this Red Cross managed home before the Nazis took it over...
She told me that the home was ordered to be emptied. Families unable to fetch their loved ones received death certificates after those remaining behind were transported to a killing center and murdered...
After WWII, the home again returned to its original owner, the German Red Cross, and today again houses the elderly, the infirm, and those needing extra care...
Authoritarians despise the physically and mentally afflicted...