In the face of drastic Medicaid cuts, Melissa Rinker’s future remains precarious.
Rinker, a 42 year-old from Doylestown, has over 20 chronic illnesses and relies 100 percent on Medicaid for medication and monthly doctor’s visits. She also depends on SNAP to help her buy groceries and an OTC card for prescription drugs and other health products. She is physically unable to work.
If Rinker were to have one message to legislators like her Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, and her Senators John Fetterman and Dave McCormick, she would want them to know that the proposed Medicaid cuts would be a “death sentence.”
“People will die. People with PTSD, veterans, elderly, disabled, children, diabetics, all this, if we lose this, it’s literally a death sentence,” Rinker said. “We don’t have a choice to live in the bodies we are given, but the people who are running this country have a choice as to whether or not they’re going to fail us too.”
On May 22, the congressional budget bill passed through the House along party lines (with only one Republican voting NO) by a narrow one-seat margin – with Fitzpatrick’s vote proving indispensable for its passage. According to the Center for American Progress, the bill now making its way through the Senate would cut $1.31 billion in Medicaid and CHIP funding from Bucks County, along with reducing enrollment by 25,000 people. The next step is for the Senate to debate the bill, make changes to it, and call it to a vote, which only requires 51 votes to pass.
Rinker started working when she was 14, and has worked as a server, bartender, preschool teacher, house painter, and more. After she was diagnosed with plantar fasciitis in 2015, she quit the service industry. She was also dealing with complex regional pain syndrome, fibromyalgia, osteoporosis, and chronic migraines. She then got her insurance license and worked at an agency from 2018 to 2020.
After taking a bad fall in the shower which left her bedbound for some time, she applied for Social Security Disability Insurance. Of those with disabilities, 35 percent nationwide rely on Medicaid, and about 14 percent statewide rely on it.
She tried to work remotely, before the pandemic, but the agency would not allow it and she lost her job. After this, she was diagnosed with Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, spinal stenosis, and sciatica. Since 2020, she has been living on disability payments in the form of $1,183 per month, Medicare and Medicaid, and food stamps. If not for Medicaid assistance, she would not be able to afford her prescribed braces that costs hundreds of dollars.
“It would lead to the complete inability for me to function on my own, and I know that I would end up bed bound again,” Rinker said. “I would not be able to shower myself if I were not able to have my medications, and I probably wouldn’t be able to walk again.”
At 7:30 a.m., Rinker’s home aide comes to help her, who also grocery shops and cleans her house for her. On her worst days, she helps her out of bed, into the restroom, in the shower, feeds her breakfast, and gets her to the couch with her heating pad and ice packs. In Pennsylvania, over 60 percent of home care services are paid for by Medicaid.
“The things that most able bodied people take for granted – driving for errands, grocery shopping, self care, showering, putting my shoes on, preparing food, walking myself to the bathroom, getting out of bed – these are things that I would not be able to do.”
The current Medicaid provisions in the budget bill contain strict work requirements for childless adults without disabilities, with a quota of 80 hours of work per month. Rinker would not be required to work; however, she would if she could. Rinker calls some of her conditions “invisible illnesses” which people sometimes don’t take seriously because “they don’t show up on a CAT scan” or are not well-known.
“It’s not like we’re lazy. It’s not like we don’t want to be a functioning member of society. It’s devastating to me that I am naturally a super hard worker, but I am living in a cage of a body that does not allow me to contribute to life at all,” Rinker said. “It’s not like it’s a choice.”
The bill is now working its way through the Senate, where there are 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and 2 Independents. But there is some dissent among Senate Republicans concerning the “substantial cuts” to social insurance programs cuts which will punish recipients no matter their political party. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) has said he “wants to make sure there are no Medicaid benefit cuts” because it “is both morally wrong and politically suicidal.” But House Speaker Johnson is holding the line, urging Senate Republicans to make as little changes to the bill as possible.
If the Senate makes changes, it will have to go back to the House for a final vote. Meanwhile, Rinker and the more than 112,000 Medicaid recipients in Bucks County will have to wait, wonder, and worry about what comes next.
