06.25.25

Cantwell on Senate Floor: “The Medicaid Expansion Literally Kept People Alive. We Should Not Reverse That.”

Shares story of five-year-old Leda Winterrose of Richland, who depends on Medicaid for life-sustaining medical supplies; Cantwell warns of higher premiums for everyone: “When you increase the cost of uncompensated care … you increase everyone's cost.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, urged her colleagues to vote against cuts to Medicaid that would effectively reverse the expansion of the program under the Affordable Care Act.

“The Medicaid expansion literally kept people alive. We should not reverse that. We've made great progress in the past 15 years to keep Americans healthier and financially secure,” said Sen. Cantwell in a speech on the Senate floor. “Allowing 16 million people, including 306,000 people from the state of Washington, to become uninsured is a bad idea. Without any alternatives, this will be a shock to our health care system. It will bring it to the breaking point and threaten the very lives of our constituents.”

Sen. Cantwell also read a letter from Britton Winterrose of Richland, WA, father to five-year-old girl Leda Winterrose.

Leda was born with a rare sleep disorder. “If she falls asleep without oxygen, she simply stops breathing, and will die,” her father wrote Sen. Cantwell. Leda spent the first 45 days of her life in intensive care.

“The only path out of the hospital was a Medicaid waiver that paid for in-home nursing and life-support equipment,” wrote Britton Winterrose. “Medicaid gave us the opportunity to bring her home, surrounded by her siblings, surrounded by the normalcy and safety of parents that love her.”

Sen. Cantwell warned that the uncompensated care costs created by stripping insurance coverages from millions of Americans will hurt everyone’s pocketbooks: “Hospital providers will have to shoulder an additional $36 billion in uncompensated care costs, and a portion of the costs will be recouped by increased premiums on employment-based insurance coverage,” the Senator said. “As a result, people with employment-based insurance will also see an additional anywhere from [$182] to $485 in annual cost increases. That's what happens when you increase the cost of uncompensated care, and the system has to make up for it somewhere, you increase everyone's cost.”

Medicaid, known as Apple Health in Washington state, covers over 1.9 million Washingtonians. Sen. Cantwell has held events across the state to hear about the impact of the proposed cuts on Washingtonians and released three reports detailing the cuts’ significant negative impacts.  

On May 2, Sen. Cantwell released a snapshot report highlighting the impact that Medicaid cuts would have on Washington state's highly-ranked long-term care system for seniors and people with disabilities. In February, she released a snapshot report that demonstrated how cuts would harm health care access in Washington state, and she followed up with a report in March that dove into impacts on the Puget Sound region. This week, the Senator released a fact sheet that warned of dire consequences for reproductive health care in Washington state if the Republican reconciliation bill is passed.

Highlights of those snapshot reports include:

  • In Washington state, WA-04 (Central Washington) and WA-05 (Eastern Washington) have the highest proportions of adults and total population on Medicaid (Apple Health). In District 4, 70% of children are on Medicaid.
  • In the Puget Sound region, children in Seattle's blue-collar strongholds would feel the deepest pain from Medicaid cuts. More than half of children in Burien, SeaTac, Kent, Federal Way, Auburn, Renton, and Rainier Valley depend on Medicaid.
  • In an exclusive survey of 68 WA nursing homes, 67 of 68 would cut services if Medicaid were cut by 5% or more, and 65% would consider closing.

Sen. Cantwell also toured the state to hear from folks who would be directly impacted by cuts to Medicare. Doctors, patients, and health care providers in Seattle, Spokane, the Tri-Cities, and Wenatchee warned that such cuts would devastate Washington state’s health care system and limit access to lifesaving care.

On May 21, Sen. Cantwell joined Washington state health care professionals for a virtual press conference to highlight statewide alarm and opposition to proposed Medicaid cuts. That same day, 23 Republican members of the Washington state legislature sent a letter to the entire Washington state federal Congressional delegation, urging the delegation to “protect Medicaid funding for Washington State.”

Video of Sen. Cantwell’s floor speech is HERE; a transcript is HERE.

A full timeline of Sen. Cantwell’s actions to defend Medicaid from cuts is HERE.

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