Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 1, 2018)
August 1, 2018 Page 13 Opinion articles do not necessarily represent the views of the Portland Observer. We welcome reader essays, photos and story ideas. Submit to news@portlandobserver.com. O PINION An Unhappy Birthday for Medicare and Medicaid Both programs very much under siege m artha b urk July 30 marks a very important anniversary in our modern political history. Fifty-three years ago in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare and Medicaid into law, creating two programs that would disproportionately improve the lives of older and low-income Americans — espe- cially women. Fast-forward to 2018, and both programs are very much under siege. Nowhere is the struggle starker than in the House Republi- can budget — titled “A Brighter American Future” — now on Capitol Hill. The importance of Medicare as a source of women’s health coverage can’t be over-emphasized. Older and disabled women make up more than half the total beneficiaries, and two-thirds of those 85 and over. This bud- get from hell takes a giant step toward pri- vatizing the program by allowing insurance companies into the Medicare marketplace, which means benefits could be caught in a by race to the bottom and become too paltry to cover all but the barest of medical needs. Medicaid is the joint federal-state pro- gram that provides low-income people with health care. The proposed Republican budget repeals the Medicaid expansion that That approach makes it easier to cut the program without saying how many people would be dropped, or how much benefits would be lowered. Since poor women under retirement age and their children are the biggest group The Medicaid remnants that survive would be turned into block grants, allowing states to pick and choose who gets covered and what kind of benefits they get — no doubt with little or no federal oversight. That approach makes it easier to cut the program without saying how many people would be dropped, or how much benefits would be lowered. came with Obamacare, which will cause 14 to 17 million people to lose coverage. The Medicaid remnants that survive would be turned into block grants, allow- ing states to pick and choose who gets cov- ered and what kind of benefits they get — no doubt with little or no federal oversight. of beneficiaries, it stands to reason they’d also be the biggest losers. But there’s more. Because women have more chronic health conditions like arthri- tis, hypertension, and osteoporosis, they’re more likely to need institutional care. Since Medicare generally doesn’t cover nursing home care, Medicaid provides such care for those with disabilities and/or very low incomes — and 60 percent of those folks are women. What’s not in the budget? Long gone is the Obama-era effort close the Ging- rich-Edwards tax loophole that allows some high-income individuals (possibly including Donald Trump) to avoid Medi- care and Social Security payroll taxes alto- gether, resulting in billions of lost revenue for both programs. The House Republican budget probably won’t pass in its present form. But with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, even compromises are sure to favor more cuts. “A Brighter American Future?” Hardly. This summer’s 53rd anniversary of Medi- care and Medicaid looks like a less than happy one for those that depend on them most — namely women, but really anyone counting on growing older. Martha Burk is the director of the Cor- porate Accountability Project for the Na- tional Council of Women’s Organizations (NCWO) and the author of the book Your Voice, Your Vote. Follow Martha on Twit- ter @MarthaBurk. Distributed by Other- Words.org. Let Me Tell You What Forced Separation Feels Like U.S.-born kids behind bars, too n iCole b raun The recent images of immigrant children in cages are incredi- bly painful to digest. Still, many people seem to forget that the U.S. has a long track record of forc- ibly separating families, whether it was African Americans during slavery, the Jap- anese during World War II, Native Ameri- cans during colonization, or poor children whose “unfit” single mothers have lost cus- tody today. Another common way families are forc- ibly separated? Juvenile detention. Tens of thousands of teens and pre-teens — most often the poor and people of col- or — are locked up in substandard, often privatized penal facilities. Children who go through these forced family separations often wind up experiencing trauma, grief, shame, and dehumanization. The sad reality is incarceration rates are on the rise alongside economic inequality, and children aren’t exempt. Quite often, the only crime these children have commit- ted is that they’re from vulnerable families or suffering from mental health issues. My son and I personally experienced this. by My son became severely depressed around the time he turned 13. I was a sin- gle mother teaching as an adjunct, making less than $20,000 a year, so the treatment he needed wasn’t available to us. My son got into the criminal “justice” system for the initial petty crime of steal- ing a pair of sneakers, and he remained there for most of his high school years. Like so many struggling kids, instead way, because I knew how the court system saw me — as a poor single mother with no husband and a “criminal” son. From the time he was 14 until he was 18, he was transferred to at least 10 differ- ent facilities. I often didn’t know where, because I wasn’t notified. Despite his chronic depression, he was also put in iso- lation a number of times — a tactic known to increase mental suffering among adult The sad reality is incarceration rates are on the rise alongside economic inequality, and children aren’t exempt. Quite often, the only crime these children have committed is that they’re from vulnerable families or suffering from mental health issues. of getting the treatment he desperately needed, he was sent to subpar facilities that made his emotional pain worse. He received no real therapy, and they often re- fused to give him his required medication or messed it up. He began to see himself as a number, as a terrible person. I saw myself the same prisoners. At one point, they put him into an adult jail in isolation for at least a month. He was 17 and had just been released from the psych ward that same day. During his once a week phone calls, I could hear the increasing desperation in his voice, as well as the screaming of other adult prisoners in the background. As a parent, this experience was devas- tating and terrorizing. There’s no way to describe it. The trauma from that pain is still real now. My son is older now, thankfully alive, and doing the hard work of putting his life back together. “Real therapy would have been so helpful,” he told me. “So much pain could have been spared.” “It really desensitizes people all the way around,” he said of his experience. “It makes you value yourself less and others less, too, since other people see you as a nonhuman.” No human should ever be treated this way. But while we are wounded, we are not broken. Social movements are gaining momen- tum. For example, the immigrant rights movement is growing alongside the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Cam- paign and other prison liberation move- ments. Separating families due to incarcera- tion, immigration status, mental health, and/or race and class is wrong. If the fam- ilies impacted by incarceration and other traumas join together with advocates for immigrants, we can create a sea of social change. As one of my students recently wrote, “There are more of us than them.” Nicole Braun is an adjunct sociology professor in northern Michigan. Distribut- ed by OtherWords.org.