Medicaid Recipient to ABC 11: “If I were to lose Medicaid […], my chances of dying go up exponentially.”
The GOP’s Medicaid cuts that tear health care away from over 650,000 people across North Carolina continue to be top of mind for North Carolinians. Medicaid recipients are shedding light on how Medicaid has changed – and even saved – their lives.
Any Republican candidate who enters the 2026 U.S. Senate race will be held accountable for these disastrous cuts that will spike costs and rip away insurance to pay for tax giveaways to billionaires.
Rob Schofield | July 15, 2025
- […] Some of the changes coming to the American social contract as a result of President Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill” are the most extreme in U.S. history.
- Nearly 12 million people across the nation and hundreds of thousands in North Carolina are projected to lose their health insurance over the coming years.
- As [Thom Tillis] said prior to voting against the bill, “So what do I tell 663,000 people [people who’ve gained Medicaid coverage in recent years as the result of the bipartisan expansion law passed in 2023] in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding is not there anymore?”
- Maddie Wertenberg is a Wake County mom who told the story of her son Oliver’s premature birth at which he weighed less than a pound. Wertenberg and her husband had private health insurance when Oliver was born, but even with that, they would still have been left with a crippling and life altering share of the $1.2 million bill his five-month hospital stay ran up.
- Fortunately for them, Oliver’s tiny size – she described him as a “nano-preemie” – qualified as a disability for Medicaid purposes and their family’s financial future was rescued as a result. “Medicaid changed my family’s life,” Wertenberg said.
- Wertenberg’s gratitude for Medicaid was echoed by a lifetime Raleigh resident named Crystal Upchurch. She explained how she was diagnosed with Lupus in 2009 and how that disease ultimately led to a serious renal condition that requires her to receive regular dialysis treatments — treatments that are, thankfully, covered by Medicaid. As she explained, her ability to continue receiving dialysis treatment is quite literally a life and death matter. “I can’t say it more clearly than this: these cuts could cost me my life,” Upchurch observed.
- Like it or not, the massive Medicaid cuts contained in the legislation will, in fact, make it inevitable that vast numbers of people with stories very similar to Maddie’s and Crystal’s will be sentenced to crippling debt, and/or premature death. After all, that’s what happened in North Carolina during the years GOP lawmakers delayed Medicaid expansion, and the new cuts make a return to those days all but inevitable.
ABC 11: Quarter of the 1 million Medicaid insured patients in NC could lose their benefits: DHHS
Elaina Athans | July 14, 2025
- Crystal Upchurch has a spare bedroom in her apartment, which has become a makeshift dialysis center.
- The 35-year-old was diagnosed with lupus 16 years ago and is on the verge of receiving a kidney transplant.
- The supplies and the upcoming surgery are paid for through Medicaid.
- She’s scared her benefits could be in limbo because of the Big Beautiful Bill.
- “It would be very detrimental to my health, because if I were to lose my benefits, I wouldn’t be able to pay for my dialysis treatments,” said Upchurch.
- NCDHHS Secretary Dr. Dev Sangvai says the bill means there will be less money for rural hospitals and a quarter of a million North Carolinians on Medicaid could be at risk.
- Upchurch says she has enough supplies to last until the end of the month and hopes she can continue receiving this support from the federal government.
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