Your recent article (Here’s how Medicaid cuts could be a $1 billion blow to Maryland’s budget, May 13, 2025) outlines how the president’s budget proposal would have a negative fiscal impact on Maryland. It proposes reducing Medicaid payments to states, and Maryland stands to lose $1 billion.

On the human level, nearly 1 in 4 Marylanders relies on Medicaid for health insurance; for children, the numbers are double that — roughly half of all Maryland kids are insured by Medicaid. If Maryland loses federal financial support for Medicaid, either our state budget will have to pay the entire cost or dollars available for Medicaid will be fewer.

We all know what a financial pinch our legislators have just faced in the past legislative session. Maryland does not have enough money to make up for federal Medicaid contributions.

If this proposed federal budget is enacted, many Maryland adults, and many more children, will have no health insurance. When they get sick, they will postpone treatment. When they finally go to the emergency room, their condition will be worse and cost more to treat.

And who will pay? All of us, either through our tax dollars or through increased insurance costs. Rural hospitals and nursing homes, which get much of their funding from Medicaid payments, will be forced to close. Our rural and elderly neighbors will then have to travel farther to get care, and the health care professionals who worked in those closed facilities will lose their jobs.

The health, the economy and the social fabric of Maryland will all decline. And times are already hard!

Rep. Kweisi Mfume and Sens. Angela Alsobrooks and Chris Van Hollen should persuade and cajole and pester their colleagues to follow the advice of Republican Sen. Josh Hawley: “Don’t cut Medicaid!”

Jan Kleinman, Baltimore

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