No Healthcare for “Throw Away People”
Photo credit: Accuray on Upslash
By Kay Bjornen
On any given day, as I drive through the small cities in our part of northwest Arkansas, I will see the same sight; one or more people sitting or standing on the median or street corner with a hand-lettered sign: “Anything helps” or “Homeless” or “Out of Work.” I call them the “Throw Away People.” These are the people who fall from the social safety net and who our leaders have decided are not worth spending our tax dollars on.
The most distressing gap is in healthcare. It’s the most invisible and hardest to fill. I have a family member who discovered a growth on his arm he suspects is an aggressive form of skin cancer. He is uninsured and the only access he has to healthcare is a free clinic that sees patients for only part of a day, one day a week.This is the only option available to him, and it is overburdened due to the large number of uninsured people.
Access to medical care is rarely possible without insurance and affordable insurance is harder to find for those in lower-income brackets thanks to cuts enacted in the 2025 HR 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Reduced subsidies for ACA (Obamacare) insurance have increased premium prices markedly to consumers, making the insurance unaffordable for many. Even if they can afford the premiums, many face high deductibles before insurance starts covering medical care. CBS News has reported that though some states have enacted measures that cushion the resulting burden on their citizens, most have not.
Cuts in federal subsidies to state Medicaid programs have been devastating. (Medicaid is the state and federal program that pays for healthcare for low-income people. The states determine who is eligible and what services are covered, and the federal government reimburses some of the states’ costs. Reliable organizations including the National Council on Aging publish consumer-friendly explanations of common questions, such as how age affects eligibility and the difference between Medicaid and Medicare.
In a pattern replicated across the country, the state of Arkansas is mostly rural and poor, and repeatedly votes for politicians who promise them they will stay that way.
Conditions could actually worsen
Actually, the politicians promise it will get worse. In 2014, after the Affordable Care Act was passed, Arkansas expanded Medicaid but included a poison pill…a clause that said if the federal funding was cut while the state legislature was out of session, there would be cuts that would prevent the use of state funds to fill the resulting gap. In spite of statistics that showed between 95,000 and 131,000 residents of the state would lose coverage, the entire Arkansas congressional delegation voted in favor of HR 1.
Arkansas has the lowest Medicaid reimbursement rate of any state and yet legislators continue to propose and pass tax cuts that put more money in the wallets of the rich. A bill proposed by a Republican state legislator would have increased reimbursement rates but it was never brought to the floor for consideration.
In a May interview with Little Rock station THV11, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jeffrey Wardlaw (R), stated that within the next five years “...you’re looking at 50 rural hospitals that are no longer on the landscape….” This perfect storm of cutting funds at both the state and federal levels is now going to ensure that rural hospitals that have been hanging on by a thread will close, consequences that will make lifesaving care impossible to access, no matter the income level of the patients.
How can our elected officials be blind to these self-imposed tragedies? Will they care if medical care becomes so hard to get that “Throw Away People” die on the sidewalks and medians of our cities, or on country roads as they try to reach emergency rooms that are hours away?
Advocacy needed
I desperately hope it doesn’t come to that. Voters need to listen carefully to candidates who ask for their votes. Are they repeating the same tired slogans to convince you that your biggest problem is high taxes? Is their highest priority punishing the poor and the working class? Do they care about keeping the local hospital open?
We must expect elected representatives to work for us. Speak up and talk to your neighbors and friends and ask them to listen as well. Together we can make the system better. We have the power to make sure that no one in our country is a “Throw Away Person.”
In order to prepare for these conversations, review A Right to Health: Day One Policy Actions for 2029, a detailed Project 2029 policy proposal (with a section on rural healthcare). The Medicare for All Act Senate Bill 1655, sponsored by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I, Vermont) during the 2023-24 session, is also a sound starting place for planning a secure healthcare future.
