Facing cuts instead of “reform”

I WORK in health care in Massachusetts, where the "reform" enacted several years ago is supposed to be the model for national proposals.

There has been a perfect storm of bad news this week that shows how twisted the government's priorities are, and exposes the lie that measures--like in Massachusetts, which requires the uninsured to purchase private health insurance--will provide health care for all.

This week, Barack Obama announced that 30,000 more troops will be sent to Afghanistan, an unjust occupation. The U.S. has no right to occupy Afghanistan or anywhere else, and more troops will mean more injury and death for Afghan civilians and U.S. soldiers.

At a cost of about $1 million per soldier per year, this will increase spending by $30 billion. Money that should be used to build is being used to destroy, and to paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr., the bombs that are being dropped abroad are exploding at home.

Last month, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities announced that 35 states face additional mid-fiscal year shortfalls of a total of about $32 billion.

The $30 billion that will go to escalate the war in Afghanistan could have been used to prevent the further budget cuts that will come as a result of these shortfalls--as could the over $32 billion in bonuses paid out this year by the top nine banks, as they profit from taxpayer bailouts.

Here in Massachusetts, there is a budget shortfall of $600 million. This will mean cuts in services to the most vulnerable. Here are some proposed cuts:

MassHealth, which is expanded Medicaid coverage for low-income people, will only provide adult dental coverage for cleanings and extractions (pulling teeth). So if you are poor and you have a cavity, if you can't afford to pay the full cost of a filling (which most poor and working people can't), your only option is to have the tooth pulled. This will have a devastating impact on quality of life, employability and self-esteem, as people will literally lose their teeth (and lack coverage for dentures).

MassHealth is also cutting the hours of services from personal care assistants (PCAs), who provide assistance to the elderly and the disabled that is critical in allowing them to stay in their homes and live independent lives. Many people will be forced to leave their homes and enter nursing homes and other facilities, and many of the PCAs themselves, already grossly underpaid, will lose their jobs.

This comes on top of cuts to other vital services for low-income people. For example, Gov. Deval Patrick is cutting $4.4 million to the Child Care Resource and Referral program, which in 2008 provided child care vouchers for 57,000 children in low-income working families so that their parents can work.

This could cripple this critical program, with devastating results. Child care is so expensive that workers facing low wages and cuts in hours will have to choose between quitting their jobs or leaving their children unattended or in other unsafe environments. And child care workers, also underpaid, will be laid off.

WHAT KIND of a life can one have with no teeth and no dentures to replace them? Why should disabled people who are perfectly capable of living independent lives be denied the services they need to do so? What kind of future will children have after spending their early years left at home without proper supervision just so their parents can work to feed them? And what chance do laid-off child care workers and PCAs have, given that there are six people applying for each job opening and their wages are low enough to make survival, let alone saving, difficult?

It doesn't have to be this way.

A recent article in the Atlantic shows that those who will suffer from these cuts can unite and fight back. The article profiles a Massachusetts man named George Birk, who suffered brain damage after being hit by a car when he was a child. He is able to work and live on his own today, but only because of state mental health services that were on the chopping block recently.

Instead of letting the state cut the funding that allows George and people like him to live in the community, instead of in an institutional setting, George and 800 other clients and mental health workers marched on the Department of Mental Health and the State House to protest the cuts. Governor Patrick ended up not cutting that funding.

We can't let the government get away with cutting education, health care, social and human services, and the jobs of the workers who provide them. Students, professors and workers in California are standing together, as did clients and mental health workers in Massachusetts.

It's going to take a mass movement to prevent and reverse these cuts, and the way to build that movement is to protest and resist, to force the cuts and their devastating impact out of the shadowy backrooms of state bureaucracies and into the light of day, where they are visible to the majority of people in this country--people who are sick and tired of money going to line the pockets of already wealthy and to kill people overseas, while we are expected to do more with less here at home.
Gary Lapon, Northampton, Mass.