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WV health care organizations again call on Capito, Justice not to support cuts to SNAP, Medicaid • West Virginia Watch [1]
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Date: 2025-06-17
As the U.S. Senate continues to debate the “big, beautiful” budget reconciliation bill, several West Virginia organizations came together Tuesday to ask their representatives not to support cuts to health care and food assistance programs.
“Right now, as we stand here on the West Side of Charleston, West Virginia, in Washington, D.C., they are making cruel calculations,” said Lida Shepherd, a representative of the American Friends Service Committee, which helped host the event. “How big of a handout of our tax dollars can be given to the wealthiest families and corporations … [while] taking SNAP and Medicaid away from all of us? Will we let them get away with playing political chess with our lives? No.”
The event — held at a Cabin Creek Health Systems clinic — was also sponsored by Catholic Charities of West Virginia, the American Cancer Society, Facing Hunger Food Bank, Protect Our Care, West Virginians for Affordable Health Care and the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition, among other groups.
The U.S. House of Representatives last month narrowly passed a version of the bill that would cut Medicaid by more than $700 billion — the largest in the program’s history. The bill would impose work reporting requirements and cause roughly 15 million people to lose their health care coverage over the next few years, analysts say.
The Senate version of the bill would cut Medicaid even more and expand the proposed work requirements for the program.
The House’s legislation would also cut $300 million from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program through 2034 and push some of the costs of SNAP benefits to states for the first time.
In the Senate version of the bill, states would pay between 5 and 15% of the food benefits program beginning in 2028, depending on their payment error rate. The cost shift could put West Virginia on the hook for up to $84 million a year.
“This bill is a cruel assault on veterans, on people with disabilities, on our health care sector, on people who struggle with food insecurity, and on working families who deserve health care and food as much as anyone else in this country,” Shepherd said.
About one in three West Virginia residents relies on Medicaid for their health care coverage. More than 277,000 — or one in six — West Virginia residents get food assistance from the SNAP program.
Representatives for Justice and Capito did not respond to emails seeking comment Tuesday. Justice recently told Politico the SNAP cuts in the bill could cause Republicans to lose their supermajority.
In an interview with CNBC last week, Capito said those who need SNAP or Medicaid benefits should get them, but said there are people on the programs who don’t qualify.
“But what’s happened here is there are people on those benefits, both benefits programs that don’t deserve to be on there or don’t qualify and have stayed on for years and years for one reason or another,” Capito said. “We need to flush that out. Get rid of the waste, the fraud, the abuse of the system so that it is there for the basic folks who need it.”
Amber Crist is CEO of Cabin Creek Health Systems, a federally qualified health center. Last year, the network of clinics treated 20,000 patients, including 7,000 Medicaid recipients.
Speaking at the news conference, Crist said nearly two thirds of West Virginians on Medicaid are already working, and another 29% are caregivers, students or have disabilities that keep them from working.
“These facts don’t demonstrate fraud, waste and abuse…These are signs of people doing their best, often under incredibly difficult circumstances,” Crist said.
Mariah Plante is a Wyoming County resident who cares for her brother who has autism, is legally blind and is nonverbal. Medicaid provides her brother’s medical care, eyeglasses, behavioral support, prescriptions and access to specialists that the family could never afford on their own, she said.
“Most importantly, Medicaid allows for us to care for Matt at home, where he’s loved, not in a facility,” Plante said. “Without it, families like ours will be forced to make heartbreaking choices. Nobody wants to put their loved one into a place like that where the staff is too often overworked, underpaid and undertrained in how to manage the needs and nuances of caring for people who cannot care for themselves.”
Sherri McKinney is vice president of the Service Employees International Union District 1199, which represents more than 24,000 health care workers in West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky. She said that proposed Medicaid cuts would decimate health care jobs. The state is on the verge of a “health care crisis” if Congress goes through with the Medicaid cuts, she said.
“Let me be absolutely clear, cuts to Medicaid cuts our lifelines,” McKinney said. “In a state like ours in West Virginia, nearly one in three West Virginians relies on Medicaid. The consequences of federal cuts will not be measured in spreadsheets. They’ll be measured in lost jobs, closed clinics, struggling families, unnecessary suffering, and people will die.”
According to analysis from researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act in the legislation would cause the closure of rural hospitals around the country, including seven in West Virginia.
The proposed 30% cut to SNAP in the bill would cause about 84,000 people in West Virginia to lose their food benefits, Shepherd said.
Libby Booker, a food pantry operator and president of Women in the NAACP, spoke against cuts to SNAP.
“There’s so much need in our community, throughout our state, just for healthy foods,” Booker said. “When we have healthy food, we have healthy bodies.”
Booker said that, years ago when she was a single mother, she struggled to put healthy food on the table for her son.
“And now I see our government losing their hearts and turning on the citizens who sent them to represent us in office,” Booker said.
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[1] Url:
https://westvirginiawatch.com/2025/06/17/wv-health-care-organizations-again-call-on-capito-justice-not-to-support-cuts-to-snap-medicaid/
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