Latest news with #Medi
North Wales Chronicle
21-07-2025
- North Wales Chronicle
UNESCO evaluators visit Ynys Môn for Global Geopark review
Ynys Môn MP, Llinos Medi, welcomed UNESCO evaluators Suzana Fajmut Struci and Alexandru Andrasanu to the island. The evaluators toured geological and cultural sites during their trip, which is part of the formal assessment process that will determine whether Ynys Môn retains its UNESCO Global Geopark status - a status which only one other site in Wales holds, and which just 220 sites in total hold worldwide. Ynys Môn's holding of the status is due to its containing rock formations from "nearly every geological period" (in the words of a spokesperson), which collectively tell the story of 1.8 billion years of the history of Earth. Ms Medi said: "It was fantastic to welcome the UNESCO evaluators and show them our 'can‑do island' spirit - strong partnerships, hard work, and determination. "This status helps protect our environment, boost education, attract tourism, and create jobs right here at home. "I want to thank the dedicated team at GeoMôn, and all the volunteers who work so hard to share our geological heritage with the world." Earlier this month, Ms Medi tabled a parliamentary motion acknowledging the global significance of Ynys Môn's geology and praising GeoMôn's efforts. She also raised the issue in Parliament, calling for greater recognition of the island's educational and environmental value. She said: "We're incredibly lucky to live on an island that shows 1.8 billion years of Earth's story. "I want to make sure that Ynys Môn continues to be recognised and celebrated globally for its unique landscape." Gary Pritchard, leader of Ynys Môn county council, said: "As the leader of the council I am extremely proud to support GeoMôn during the revalidation of our island's UNESCO Global Geopark status. "The work that GeoMôn's volunteers do is exceptional, and a vital asset to our island in the areas of education, heritage, and tourism.' A spokesman for Bangor Business School added: "We value the opportunities that the UNESCO Global Geopark status provides as a rich context for both teaching and research. READ MORE: Anglesey residents celebrate £400K Postcode Lottery windfall "Within our Tourism Management programme, it enriches student fieldwork and lecture content, and supports students' engagement with sustainable tourism. "We hope UNESCO will revalidate Ynys Môn's Global Geopark status." More information about UNESCO's Global Geoparks is available at
USA Today
19-07-2025
- Health
- USA Today
They don't need Medicaid. But their kids do.
Stacy Staggs's 11-year-old daughter will never eat or breathe on her own. Five times a day, Staggs or a nurse feeds her daughter, Emma Staggs, doctor-prescribed formula through a feeding tube at home. The formula comes at $25 per bottle, amounting to $125 per day. The formula is covered through Medicaid, a program jointly funded by the federal government and states, which faces severe cuts through President Donald Trump's Republican-backed and recently passed reconciliation package. The law directly impacts nondisabled adults who must get a job or qualify for an exemption in order to maintain Medicaid coverage. But advocates are worried about how vulnerable populations might be harmed as states manage funding shortfalls due to other provisions in the law. Emma Staggs has bilateral vocal cord paralysis that prohibits her from swallowing or sounding out words, chronic lung disease, developmental delays and other daily health struggles. She survived the first months of her life in the intensive care unit after she was born at 1 pound, 9 ounces. In addition to the formula she needs to survive, Medicaid covers a pulse oximeter, oxygen concentrator, oxygen tanks for travel and a heap of other medical equipment in her North Carolina bedroom. The program also pays for in-home health nurses who help her eat and breathe and occupational therapy at a farm that helps her gain strength and dexterity to be able to use her hands. It covered horseback-riding physical therapy that helped her climb stairs this year. The Staggs are on edge. For them, it's no question that the new law could put their ability to cover the cost of their daughter's care in jeopardy. The law slashes the amount of federal money given to states to fund their Medicaid programs, so now states will have to decide which programs to cut. The North Carolina program that funds Emma Staggs's formula, medical equipment, health nurses and occupational therapy is called the Katie Beckett waiver or the Community Alternatives Program for Children. It's a Medicaid waiver that helps families of children who have complex needs and long-term disabilities receive and sustain at-home care so their children do not need to be cared for in an institution. Stacy Staggs is worried that it could end up on the chopping block. 'We would have to take out loans, sell the house and move in with my mom,' Staggs said. 'We would go into medical bankruptcy to keep Emma alive.' Officials from North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services have not said whether the waiver will be cut due to reduced Medicaid revenue. James Werner, a spokesperson for the department, said in an email to USA TODAY officials are "reviewing the final legislation to determine its full impact on the state and its residents." "These cuts not only impact the people that rely on them directly but also strain the systems and communities that hold us all together," Werner said. Millions of children and adults with disabilities enrolled in Medicaid rely on the medications, equipment and staff the program covers to stay healthy, survive and be active members in their communities. Without in-home help, and sometimes even with it, family caregivers − frequently mothers − often pick up the slack, switching jobs or leaving their careers behind to care for their kids with special needs. The cuts to Medicaid could exacerbate that reality. For the Staggs family, it's a matter of life and death. "If we get to a place where we're no longer eligible, I can start a timer on how much longer Emma will be alive," Stacy Staggs said. "That's the end of it. It's not abstract. It's not hyperbole. It's the only thing that she can eat. There isn't any substitute." What is Medicaid, who uses it and what's changed? Some states have opted to expand Medicaid to help families pay for items their children with disabilities need that other health insurance companies might not cover, like wheelchairs, car seats and communication devices. There's no other program that comes close to the support Medicaid provides for recipients and their families, said Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health. 'There's no health system recovery from a destroyed Medicaid program,' Rosenbaum said. How Trump's tax bill Could cut Medicaid for millions of Americans Nearly half of the 78 million people who were enrolled in Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Programs at the start of the year were children, according to the federal government. One in 5 children in the United States has special health care needs, and about half of those kids have coverage through Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program, according to Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy Center for Children and Families. The Trump administration's Medicaid cuts will leave nearly 12 million people uninsured by 2034, according to a cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office. Another estimate from the Senate Joint Economic Committee Minority says it's closer to 20 million people. The new law increases Medicaid eligibility checks from once a year to twice a year, leading to more paperwork and potentially delayed funding for already overwhelmed families like the Staggs. This goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2027. States with robust Medicaid expansion programs, also known as "optional" enrollments, will also have to roll back supports because they'll receive less money from the federal government to fund them. Medicaid's opponents 'just don't understand the program,' said Kim Musheno, senior director of Medicaid for the disability advocacy group The Arc. 'They just see a price tag,' Rosenbaum said. 'And the price tag is for people they consider wholly undesirable.' 'Attack on rural America' Kentucky governor hits Medicaid cuts in Trump's megabill Supporters of the GOP's plan, including Speaker Mike Johnson, said the federal government needs to slash funding and that Medicaid needs to be more efficient. He also said able-bodied people who don't work and undocumented immigrants should be barred from receiving medical assistance in an interview with CBS News in May. Those who don't work are 'taking advantage of the system,' he said. 'What we're doing is working on fraud, waste and abuse,' Johnson said. In-home help is essential for caregiver parents Lindsay Latham, a mother in Virginia, doesn't want to quit the job she loves as director of operations for a lighting company. But she'll likely have to if Medicaid cuts strip her 11-year-old son of in-home care. Her son, Calvin Latham, was born with a brain malformation. Doctors told them he might never walk or talk, and that he'd likely develop epilepsy. He's progressed a lot since then, Latham said, but he still needs help eating, drinking, bathing and getting dressed. Latham said she thought their family's health insurance would cover her son's medical needs. But it didn't cover all of it. Medicaid has picked up the rest of the tab to cover things her and her husband's insurance won't, including his car seat, an adaptive stroller, a speech device, anticonvulsant medications and in-home attendant care to help him get out of bed and ready for school in the mornings, and bathed and back in bed at night. It wasn't easy, Latham said. Her son's Medicaid application was rejected three times before he was enrolled through the Commonwealth Coordinated Care Plus Waiver. She's bracing for more red tape with the new requirements that involve more frequent eligibility checks. 'To make it harder for people who are working to fill out paperwork to maintain their medical coverage,' Latham said. 'It's cruel.' More pressing, Latham is worried the state will reduce or cut her son's attendant and respite care if the reduced federal match can't support the hours he needs. The state's Medicaid budget is already strapped, she said, and her son receives minimal hours through his Medicaid wavier. Her son is on a waitlist for the state's Developmental Disability Community Living Waiver, also funded through Medicaid, which provides in-home care. It's a long list, she said, and she's been told he might not get off it until he's 30. She's terrified the state will cut or shrink the program even more. "This isn't just an immediate effect on Calvin's life," she said. "This is going to be lifelong." Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin's office did not respond to USA TODAY's inquiry about what programs will be eliminated or reduced due to the federal Medicaid cuts. If Medicaid no longer covers her son's attendant care, especially during the summer months when he's out of school, Latham said all of his caregiving duties will fall to her and she'd become a stay-at-home mom. As the breadwinner of the family, she said, that would mean the Lathams won't be able to afford updating their home as their son grows up and starts to need a wheelchair and wheelchair-accessible entryways. 'We're not on this because we're trying to play the system,' Latham said. 'We're on it because we need it. He needs it. He deserves to have a fulfilling, rich life in his community.' 'Really a lot at stake' Doctors told Mary Caruso the chances of her having a child with Friedreich's ataxia, a rare genetic disorder that affects the nervous system, were 25%. She didn't have one child with the disease. She had two. 'We do play lotto,' Caruso joked. Thirty years later, Caruso said her family has finally settled into a routine that includes a rotation of more than a dozen health attendants covered through Connecticut's Community First Choice program, a Medicaid expansion program through the Affordable Care Act. Both of her children − 35-year-old Alexandria Bode and 38-year-old Sam Bode − have jobs and spend time volunteering and participating in various community events with the help of their staff. 'We have some amazing people here,' Caruso said. 'I don't know, honestly, what we would do without them.' Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont's office did not respond to USA TODAY's inquiry on whether the state will cut or reduce services for those enrolled in the Community First Choice program. If the state opts to reduce expansion programs because of federal Medicaid cuts, and the Bode siblings lose coverage, Caruso said they'll have to leave their jobs. It would fall to Caruso to help them eat, drink, bathe, dress and perform most other daily activities. 'It's hard to really understand how valuable caregivers and these programs are. And you're talking about two people who want to be part of society," Caruso said. 'They have a right to be, and they can't do it alone, physically.' There is 'really a lot at stake,' Caruso said. She won't consider ever putting her children in a facility. She'd care for them herself until she died. 'But it would not be easy,' she said. After working to live on her own, 'Could this mean that I have to move back?' Other family caregivers who recently found respite might find themselves back in a caregiving role if their adult children are kicked off Medicaid. James Rothchild said his daughter was diagnosed with autism when she was 3 years old. It was a 'lengthy process' for her to get ready to live on her own, he said, and he wasn't always convinced it would be possible. But Chloe Rothschild, 32, moved out 2 ½ years ago. To prepare for the move, Chloe Rothschild said she spent more than 10 years practicing various skills like working with her in-home aide staff, staying alone overnight and cooking and cleaning. 'I worked really hard to get here,' she said. 'So, I don't want to go backward.' Rothschild said her direct support providers, who are paid through a Medicaid waiver, come by for one to three hours, four to five days a week, to help her cook, clean, shop and organize. 'I'm really thriving,' she said. 'And I'm continuing to make progress and gain skills. Like just this weekend, I'm going out of town for work. And for the first time ever, no one is going with me.' Dan Tierney, deputy director of media relations from Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine's office, said the state is "still reviewing the bill for potential impacts." "But we do not anticipate any major cuts in Ohio as a result of the bill's passage," Tierney wrote in an email to USA TODAY. Rothschild isn't convinced. If Medicaid cuts reduce her hours of support or cut them entirely, she's worried it would lead to skill regression and potentially take away her independence. She wonders: 'Could this mean that I have to move back in with my family?' She can't live on her own without in-home help, her father said. 'It would be fairly devastating,' he said. 'It would not be good for our family.' 'More pressure on families' Nearly half of US states are on the brink of a caregiving emergency 'It's going to be those of us with disabilities' Emma Staggs will never be able to live independently. Medicaid has funded nearly $4 million of her life-saving care for nearly 12 years, her mother said. That's only for a portion of the services she needs to survive. Her father's private medical insurance pays for the rest. Staggs said she is furious about what the potential loss of Medicaid could mean for her family and others like them. Their fate is in the hands of the state now. "The goal of all of this is less people going forward, and it's going to be those with disabilities and an inability to work in the workforce," she said. She and her family lobbied in Washington, D.C., in the days before the bill passed. They now plan to target their state lawmakers. In the meantime, Staggs has attempted to ration the formula she gets by diluting it with water. Sometimes she gives her daughter Gatorade instead. And she's made an appointment with her daughter's doctor to see if they can try another feeding option or a backlog supply of the formula while they are guaranteed Medicaid. 'That's the part that has me in real panic,' Staggs said. 'When they're talking about an end date to Medicaid, it's like saying how long they're keeping Emma alive.' Madeline Mitchell's role covering women and the caregiving economy at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal Ventures and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input. Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@ Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Senate Republicans shock the House with a supercharged megabill
It was the exact opposite of what nearly everyone on Capitol Hill expected. Rather than soften its edges, Senate Republicans took the sprawling Republican megabill the House sent them and sharpened it further, making the heart of President Donald Trump's legislative agenda more politically explosive. GOP senators made steeper cuts to Medicaid, hastened cuts to wind and solar energy tax credits and also managed to add hundreds of billions of dollars more to the deficit compared to the House plan. Usually, it's far-right conservatives in the House proposing politically precarious policies, leaving the careful moderates in the Senate — the 'cooling saucer,' according to the old Hill cliche — to dial them back. This time, Senate Republicans were dead-set on making an expensive suite of pro-growth business tax cuts permanent. That required finding deep offsetting cuts, and the cold, hard calculus by the Senate GOP's chief architects was that enough of their 53-member conference would ultimately swallow their protests and go along. That bet paid off Tuesday with a 51-50 nail-biter vote. But now GOP senators are having to do some explaining to House Republicans who are already balking at the remodeled bill — particularly moderates who were counting on senators to water down the Medicaid and clean-energy provisions. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said House members who thought the Senate would walk back some of its changes had 'miscalculated.' 'We are a more conservative body,' Cramer said in an interview, adding that there are moderates in the House who 'cringe at the sound of any word that starts with 'Medi.'' As for conservatives who are cringing at the higher deficits created by the Senate bill, they're not finding much sympathy among their Senate counterparts, who ended up embracing a controversial accounting tactic that effectively zeros out the cost of extending expiring tax cuts. 'We actually make the business provisions permanent, right? That's the main difference,' Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in an interview Monday about complaints by the House Freedom Caucus that the bill would add $651 billion to the deficit. Johnson was among a group of Senate fiscal hawks who railed against the legislation for months, then fell in line for the final vote Tuesday, just like their colleagues anticipated. In the end, the fiscal impact of the bill grew in two directions: Despite Senate leaders' vow to find more spending cuts, their bill might well have increased spending on net as a result of negotiations with holdouts who successfully pushed for increased funding for rural hospitals and carve-outs on safety-net program cutbacks. 'The bill includes over $500 billion in new spending, and at the end to get the vote of the Alaska senator, billions and billions more were added,' said Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, one of the three Republicans who voted against the bill Tuesday. House members, he added, are 'going to look at it and see that it's much less conservative than it started out to be and it's going to add much more to the debt.' Strict Senate budget rules also meant that some House spending cuts had to be scaled back or dropped altogether, so senators had to dig deep to find offsets elsewhere — especially given the $466 billion cost of adding the permanent business tax cuts to the bill versus just extending them through 2029, as the House did. Yet there was no serious discussion about leaving those tax cuts behind. Majority Leader John Thune, Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo and other tax-writing Republicans considered it their top priority. Thune called it a red line for many of his members, and it was one that ultimately influenced some of the Senate's most politically fraught decisions. In an interview after the bill's passage, Thune acknowledged that the decision to make the business tax cuts permanent impacted the savings and overall strategy for the bill.'We really believed that permanence was the key to economic growth because it creates certainty,' he said. 'All the models that we saw showed that you got more growth with permanence.' To compensate, Finance Committee Republicans significantly dialed back some of Trump's marquee campaign promises to enact tax relief for tipped wages and overtime work. Many of those senators privately scoffed that the populist tax policies were not particularly pro-growth, as opposed to the write-offs for business equipment and research and development expenses. Even more explosive, however, is how they chose to wring additional savings out of Medicaid. The joint federal-state health program had already emerged as a political hornet's nest in the House, where members balked at various proposals that would turn off the federal money spigot and force states to kick residents off their health plans. Eventually the House landed on a compromise proposal of capping medical provider taxes, a popular financing mechanism for state Medicaid programs. Many Republicans objected, but it beat several alternatives, such as explicitly reducing the federal cost share formula for Medicaid enrollees. Many Republican senators prepared to make their peace with the proposal, including Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who said in a Monday interview that he was privately prepared to accept the House's provider tax cap with minor tweaks after a hospital association in his state formally blessed it. But before Hawley could announce his support, the Senate Finance Committee released a draft that discarded the freeze and instead drastically scaled down the tax. Instead of waving a white flag, Hawley went on the warpath, urging Thune to drop the Senate proposal and backchanneling with House leadership to undermine it. Hawley, who described himself as 'stunned' by the Senate's provider tax language, said he never got an explanation for why leadership went down that route. In the interview, he held up and rubbed his fingers together — indicating that he believed they were looking for money. 'I think it's a matter of our mark, the Senate mark, made a lot more of the business tax cuts permanent,' he said. While leadership was ultimately able to get Hawley on board — he won approval for a radiation victims compensation fund he's championed and other smaller goodies — the decision to go deeper on Medicaid lost Republicans two key senators during the final vote on Tuesday afternoon — Maine's Susan Collins and North Carolina's Thom Tillis. Both purple-state senators urged the Senate to revert to the House Medicaid language. Tillis privately warned leaders the Senate proposal would devastate his state and cost him reelection. Days later, he announced he would not run again and publicly torched the bill, saying it would 'betray the promise Donald Trump made.' The Senate's Medicaid swerve has also put Speaker Mike Johnson in a bind. When he was locking down support for the House to pass its version of the bill, he privately reassured his members that the Senate would soften his chamber's Medicaid cuts. Over the past week, he continued to reiterate to them that the Senate would end up closer to what the House passed. Now, he has to explain to increasingly frustrated House moderates why that didn't happen. But even as House Republicans were publicly banking on the Senate to soften the Medicaid cuts, Senate Republicans were pushing to go further. During an early June Finance Committee meeting with Trump at the White House, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming described to the president how the provider tax amounted to 'money laundering' and would constitute cracking down on fraud, according to a person granted anonymity to disclose private discussions. Other unpredictable events forced Senate Republicans to lose out on hundreds of billions of dollars in savings. After lengthy debates between Republican and Democratic staff in June, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough advised that upward of $200 billion in House offsets would have to be left out of the bill because they didn't comply with Senate budget rules. House Republicans had also banked on $116 billion in revenue from retaliatory taxes aimed at dissuading foreign countries from implementing digital levies and a global minimum tax that the GOP detests. Shortly after the Senate included the proposal in its text — and a freakout by analysts on Wall Street — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a deal with G7 countries on the global tax and asked for the retaliatory taxes to be removed. Other changes, like sharp cuts to certain clean-energy tax credits, seemed spurred more by politics than fiscal considerations. After the megabill passed the House in May, far-right influencers and lawmakers got increasingly vocal about what they perceived as deeply unfair subsidies to green industries. Trump began calling Thune to urge him to take an axe to wind and solar energy incentives that had been enacted by former President Joe Biden, even after softened language backed by Senate moderates was inserted into the Finance Committee text. Trump told the same to Senate conservatives, many of whom had been swayed by fossil-fuel advocate Alex Epstein. They invited Epstein to address a Senate lunch in June to win over skeptical colleagues. Even a late intervention from the world's richest man couldn't move the needle. Elon Musk publicly lashed out at Republicans for scaling back the tax credits, including making a public appeal to Speaker Mike Johnson to keep them online. He also personally approached Thune in recent days as the Senate debated the bill. Thune declined to comment on the conversation, but afterward Musk continued attacking the bill, arguing that it would hurt America's ability to compete with China. Senate holdouts did manage to clinch the removal of a controversial tax on solar and wind energy projects in 11th-hour negotiations, as well as a carve-out from the phaseouts for projects that start construction immediately. But the harsh language pushed by Epstein, which required most other wind and solar projects to be placed in service by the end of 2027 to qualify for the incentives, stayed in the final Senate product. Tillis, liberated of political niceties after announcing his retirement, railed against the clean-energy changes on the Senate floor on Sunday, arguing that they would gut power projects that are already being developed. Taking aim at Epstein, Tillis chalked up the changes to 'people who have never worked a day in this industry, maybe philosophized and written a few white papers on it, but haven't gotten their hands dirty.' Ben Jacobs, Josh Siegel and Kelsey Tamborrino contributed to this report.
Politico
01-07-2025
- Business
- Politico
House Republicans wanted the Senate to fix their megabill. They 'miscalculated.'
Usually, it's far-right conservatives in the House proposing politically precarious policies, leaving the careful moderates in the Senate — the 'cooling saucer,' according to the old Hill cliche — to dial them back. This time, Senate Republicans were dead-set on making an expensive suite of pro-growth business tax cuts permanent. That required finding deep offsetting cuts, and the cold, hard calculus by the Senate GOP's chief architects was that enough of their 53-member conference would ultimately swallow their protests and go along. That bet paid off Tuesday with a 51-50 nail-biter vote. But now GOP senators are having to do some explaining to House Republicans who are already balking at the remodeled bill — particularly moderates who were counting on senators to water down the Medicaid and clean-energy provisions. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said House members who thought the Senate would walk back some of its changes had 'miscalculated.' 'We are a more conservative body,' Cramer said in an interview, adding that there are moderates in the House who 'cringe at the sound of any word that starts with 'Medi.'' As for conservatives who are cringing at the higher deficits created by the Senate bill, they're not finding much sympathy among their Senate counterparts, who ended up embracing a controversial accounting tactic that effectively zeros out the cost of extending expiring tax cuts. 'We actually make the business provisions permanent, right? That's the main difference,' Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in an interview Monday about complaints by the House Freedom Caucus that the bill would add $651 billion to the deficit. Johnson was among a group of Senate fiscal hawks who railed against the legislation for months, then fell in line for the final vote Tuesday, just like their colleagues anticipated. No permanence enemies In the end, the fiscal impact of the bill grew in two directions: Despite Senate leaders' vow to find more spending cuts, their bill might well have increased spending on net as a result of negotiations with holdouts who successfully pushed for increased funding for rural hospitals and carve-outs on safety-net program cutbacks.
Boston Globe
26-06-2025
- Health
- Boston Globe
Supreme Court rules Planned Parenthood cannot sue over South Carolina defunding effort
But abortion was mentioned only in passing in the decision, and the patient in the case had sought access to contraception, not an abortion. Instead, the justices focused on whether the plaintiffs were entitled to sue to enforce part of the Medicaid law, which gives federal money to states to provide medical care for poor people. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Still, in shutting down such suits in federal court, the majority made it easier for states to deny funding to Planned Parenthood, particularly given the current administration's hostility to abortion rights. Advertisement Medicaid provides federal money to states, but it sets some conditions. One is that eligible participants may receive assistance from any provider qualified to perform the required services. At issue in the case was whether a patient could sue to enforce that provision and obtain Planned Parenthood services for medical treatment other than abortions. Abortions are banned in South Carolina after six weeks of pregnancy. Even then, federal law prohibits the use of Medicaid funding for abortion except in life-threatening circumstances or in cases of rape or incest. But Planned Parenthood clinics in Charleston and Columbia, S.C., provide services unrelated to abortion, including counseling, physical exams, contraception, and screenings for cancer and sexually transmitted infections. Advertisement Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said private suits to enforce federal statutes are rarely permissible and require clear congressional authorization. 'After all, the decision whether to let private plaintiffs enforce a new statutory right poses delicate questions of public policy,' he wrote, adding that those questions should be resolved by 'the people's elected representatives, not unelected judges.' Gorsuch wrote that there are other ways to enforce the statute. The federal government can cut off Medicaid money, he wrote, and South Carolina has an administrative process in which medical providers can challenge their exclusion from the state's Medicaid program. In dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, said the law in question directly authorized the suit. She added that Gorsuch's proposed alternatives were unrealistic. 'In practice,' she wrote, the federal government 'rarely invokes its authority to withhold funding because doing so would inevitably harm the program's beneficiaries.' Jackson concluded her dissent by predicting that grave consequences would flow from the majority's approach. 'Today's decision is likely to result in tangible harm to real people,' she wrote. 'At a minimum, it will deprive Medicaid recipients in South Carolina of their only meaningful way of enforcing a right that Congress has expressly granted to them. And, more concretely, it will strip those South Carolinians — and countless other Medicaid recipients around the country — of a deeply personal freedom: the 'ability to decide who treats us at our most vulnerable.'' Advertisement John J. Bursch, a lawyer with the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian group that represented South Carolina, welcomed the ruling. 'The American people don't want their tax dollars propping up the abortion industry,' he said in a statement. 'The Supreme Court rightly restored the ability of states like South Carolina to steward limited public resources to best serve their citizens.' Paige Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, which brought the suit, said in a statement: 'Today's decision is a grave injustice that strikes at the very bedrock of American freedom and promises to send South Carolina deeper into a health care crisis.' She added that the South Carolina law was an effort to 'weaponize anti-abortion sentiment to deprive communities with low incomes of basic health care.' A federal trial judge blocked the South Carolina directive, saying that it ran afoul of Medicaid's requirement that patients may choose any qualified provider. The litigation that followed was convoluted and circuitous, focusing largely on whether Medicaid's provision created a right that individuals could enforce by filing lawsuits. The Supreme Court has said that federal laws like Medicaid, which give money to states if they accept certain conditions, must 'unambiguously confer individual federal rights' to give affected individuals the right to sue. That is a hard test to meet, and the court has only rarely ruled that it has been satisfied, most recently in 2023 in Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County v. Talevski, a case concerning nursing homes. The statute at issue in that case repeatedly referred to 'rights' as such, while the Medicaid provision in the new case, Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, uses different language. Advertisement That law says that people seeking medical services 'may obtain such assistance from any institution' that is 'qualified to perform the service or services required.' Last year, a unanimous three-judge panel of the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals, in Richmond, Va., ruled that the suit could proceed. 'This case is, and always has been, about whether Congress conferred an individually enforceable right for Medicaid beneficiaries to freely choose their health care provider,' Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote for the panel. 'Preserving access to Planned Parenthood and other providers means preserving an affordable choice and quality care for an untold number of mothers and infants in South Carolina.' He added that 'this decision is not about funding or providing abortions.' This article originally appeared in
