If you listen to Elon Musk, he’ll tell you that cutting Medicaid (aka healthcare) is about stopping fraud, saving taxpayers money, and making the government more efficient for everyone. Like almost every other claim he’s made since he decided he was a political expert, it’s an outright lie.
Medicaid cuts are not about fraud. They’re about power and greed. They’re about billionaires like Musk and the right-wing politicians in their pockets consolidating control, dismantling public programs, and leaving working class people– including Latine communities– without the healthcare we need to survive. But it’s not just Republicans making this happen. Corporate Democrats play right along too, like the nine who voted to slash Medicaid right alongside them. This goes beyond a partisan issue– politicians in both parties are putting their donors, lobbyists, and special interests over the people they’re supposed to represent.
And when politicians cut Medicaid, it’s Latine communities that pay the price.
A History of Healthcare Challenges and Neglect
Although Latine folks aren’t the largest group on Medicaid, we are the demographic with the highest percentage of our people relying on it. Nearly 31% of Latines–over 20 million people– are enrolled in Medicaid. That’s because so many Latines work in jobs (think construction, agriculture, or domestic work) that don’t provide health insurance or offer plans that are completely out of reach. And we’re facing this in a political landscape that’s already stacked against us. Every day, we have to fight for our dignity where politicians attack our communities not just through Medicaid cuts, but through immigration policies that dehumanize us, criminalize our families, and push us further into the shadows.
Even with Medicaid, Latines already face huge barriers to healthcare. We use healthcare less than other groups– not because we don’t need it, but because of systemic obstacles that make access difficult. Language barriers are still making the system hard to navigate. Fear and misinformation, majorly fueled by policies like the public charge rule, have sown fear in immigrant communities–to the point where even if they qualify, folks opt to reject Medicaid because they worry it could be used against them when applying for a green card or pursuing a pathway to citizenship.
Profit-Centered Politics Hurt Everyday People
That fear never went away– it just evolved. Now, new threats– mass deportations, attacks on birthright citizenship, and bolder anti-immigrant rhetoric– are creating the same chilling effect, with very real consequences. Under the first Trump administration, Latine folks avoided emergency rooms, skipped doctors visits, and delayed crucial treatments. Due to fears that their information would be used against them or their loved ones, healthcare facilities became too high-risk. Unfortunately, we’re seeing the same trends now under Trump’s second term.
With these proposed cuts, we stand to lose even more. These cuts would push millions of our moms, tias, tios, y abuelitas off their health insurance, shut down hospitals, and make it even harder for working-class people to get care. When that happens, it’s not Musk or his billionaire friends who will suffer. It’s us.
And it’s not just individuals who will suffer– our neighborhoods, our families, our futures are on the line. Slashing Medicaid means hospitals shutting down, especially in rural and underserved areas. It means job losses for healthcare workers, many of whom are Latine. It means worse health outcomes for everyone.
Reading In Between the Lies of the GOP
Republicans, and some Democrats, love to talk about how they support workers, but their priorities tell a different story. Latine workers make up a huge portion of the healthcare workforce– we’re the nurses, home health aides, and hospital staff that keep this system running. When these cuts go through, it’s not just patients who will lose out. It’s the people who care for them, too. And while Republicans lead the charge on gutting these programs, too many Democrats either stay silent or go along with it, refusing to fight for the working class families they claim to to stand with.
Let’s talk about fraud. Right now, Republicans are claiming that Medicare and Medicaid are “riddled” with it, that the government is losing hundreds of billions of dollars to wasteful spending. They want us to believe that entitlement programs like Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) But that’s not what the numbers actually say.
Listen to any press conference, Fox News interview, or the latest grifter’s podcast episode, and you’ll hear the same thing. Trump and his allies are throwing around one figure about entitlement programs: $521 billion lost to fraud every year. However, the real number is much lower, according to reports from the Government Accountability Office. What’s more, most of it isn’t even fraud– it’s clerical errors, overpayments, and bureaucratic mistakes.
When Healthcare Mentiras Become Political Tactics
After Musk openly entertained gutting entitlement programs (citing false claims, naturally), the White House scrambled to do damage control. They rushed out a press release packed with so-called “facts” to justify potential cuts. But as David Corn writes, every single claim in that press release crumbles under the slightest scrutiny.
Not a single one actually backs up the case they’re trying to make. It’s all spin, the same bad faith distraction we’ve come to expect from Trump’s second term. The administration is more interested in protecting billionaires than the people relying on these programs to survive.
And none of this is new to us. We know that’s how this administration operates. First, they manufacture a crisis. They claim entitlement programs are to blame, cherry-picking numbers to make it seem like the whole system is collapsing under misuse. They ignore the billions in corporate tax fraud that actually drain public money, because that’s not their real concern.
Then, they use their made-up crisis to justify slashing public programs. Instead of fixing real issues– like ensuring that Medicaid funding is used effectively– they push for massive cuts that will rip healthcare away from millions of people. They call it “fiscal responsibility”, but have no problem giving tax breaks to billionaires.
And for Their Last Trick: Greed
And finally, they shift power away from the public and into private hands. People won’t stop needing healthcare when Medicaid is gutted. They just get pushed into expensive private insurance or go without care at all. And who profits from that? We’d give you three guesses, but you won’t need the other two. It’s the same billionaires and corporations funding the GOP– and the same insurance giants and lobbyists too many Democrats are afraid to stand up to.
We already know what’s coming– because we’ve lived it. The fight goes beyond Medicaid. It’s a test. Republicans are pushing the limits, seeing how much they can get away with, and if they win here, they won’t stop. If they can convince people that essential programs like Medicaid are “wasteful” and gut them without consequences, Medicare is next. Then Social Security. Then every single public program that keeps working class people afloat.
They’ve already laid the groundwork. They’ve floated plans to raise the retirement age, slash Social Security benefits, and dismantle Medicare as we know it. And they aren’t exactly being subtle about what it would mean.
But here’s the thing– neither are we.
Committed to the Struggle, No Matter What Comes
Across the country, thousands of healthcare workers and their supporters have organized and mobilized to protect access. People everywhere have packed town halls, flooded congressional offices with calls, and taken to the streets. We’ve heard the stories of patients who rely on Medicaid to survive and families who would be devastated by these cuts. We’ve seen frontline workers organizing against these cuts that further treat healthcare as a luxury instead of a right. Unions are in the trenches at these actions too, demanding that no billionaires stack their profits on our lives.
United, our gente are fighting back, refusing to let the greed of a handful of the ultra-rich dictate who gets to live and who is left to suffer. We still don’t know exactly the path to victory or the path to el Buenvivir. There’s no perfect formula or recipe, but we do know that step by step, paso a paso, side by side, codo a codo, and from all places and spaces, desde cada trinchera, we will fight.
Carolina Mendez is a Chicana organizer from Anaheim, CA, committed to building power within her community and beyond. As Mijente’s Digital Organizer, she’s driven by her passion for organizing alongside her gente to create a just future and achieve el Buenvivir for all.