Partnership for Basic Needs: The Waiting Room
The Partnership for Basic Needs is a coalition fighting to protect the programs Americans depend on to survive, including health care, food assistance, and housing. The stories and statistics in the Waiting Room zine are drawn from the following sources:
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Kaiser Family Foundation: Medicaid covers 1 in 5 Americans
Kaiser Family Foundation: Based on the earlier federal data and more recent other publicly available information, KFF now estimates that, if Congress extends enhanced premium tax credits, subsidized enrollees would save $1,016 in premium payments over the year in 2026 on average. In other words, expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits is estimated to more than double what subsidized enrollees currently pay annually for premiums—a 114% increase from an average of $888 in 2025 to $1,904 in 2026. (The average premium payment net of tax credits among subsidized enrollees held steady at $888 annually in 2024 and 2025 due to the enhanced premium tax credits).
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Congressional Budget Office: The law cuts $1.1 trillion from Medicaid and ACA marketplaces. This is the largest cut to Medicaid in the program’s history.
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Roughly 15 million people will lose health coverage and become uninsured by 2034 because of the Medicaid and ACA marketplace cuts in the Republican megabill, the law’s failure to extend enhanced premium tax credits for ACA marketplace coverage, and other harmful ACA marketplace rule changes, according to CBO estimates.
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The Beacon: Hundreds of thousands could lose Medicaid and SNAP benefits in Missouri, Kansas
“As Crystal Lyon was preparing to give birth last spring, she took steps to ensure her daughter was enrolled in Medicaid as soon as she was born. Her daughter’s father had been born with retinoblastoma, a rare form of eye cancer. That type of cancer is caused by a genetic mutation, and soon after their daughter Ari was born they started to suspect she may also have the mutation.
Their suspicions were confirmed, and less than three months after she was born, Ari was diagnosed and began chemotherapy treatments. Throughout the process, Crystal was unable to work while she took care of Ari, and her family relied on one income to make ends meet.
Just over a year later, Ari is in remission. But the $425,000 price tag for her treatment could have pushed her family into a financial crisis.
Now, as Congress debates cuts to Medicaid and implementing work requirements for the program and other assistance, Lyon is fearful of what it could mean for her family and her community of Foristell, Missouri.”
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New Jersey Advance: N.J. Republicans, don’t turn your back on children with disabilities like mine. Protect Medicaid.
“Every morning, I wake up to the reality of being a full-time caregiver and single mom to my 12-year-old twin boys. Both of my sons are profoundly autistic. Dylan is completely nonverbal, and Max has a limited, emerging vocabulary. Their needs are complex, their care is constant, and their future depends on the support systems that allow them to grow, learn, and live with dignity.
One of those systems — perhaps the most important — is Medicaid.”
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Storyteller provided by Center for American Progress.
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USA Today: Pulling from a 401K. Going back to work. ACA costs worry self-employed
“Chrysa Ostenso expects to pull money from her 401(k) to pay for the $1,500-a-month health insurance she’ll get next year when the Affordable Care Act enhanced tax credits end.
She and her husband operated his optometry practice in rural Wisconsin for 35 years before he died a few months ago. With the tax credits, they paid as much as $500 for insurance. Before the tax credits were created in 2021 to help more people get insurance during the COVID-19 pandemic, the cost was closer to $2,000 a month.
Now, as Ostenso, 62, works to wind down and sell the business without him, she got a letter notifying her that without the enhanced credit, a plan covering just her will cost $1,500 a month and come with a $7,200 deductible.”