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Comment by ok_dad | Hacker News Reader

My autistic kid and my whole family rely on Medicaid while we have no income. Is it worth my kid not having their necessary treatments to save a few thousand bucks? Any MAGA want to answer me as to why this is a good thing? I served America for a decade in the military and now I’ll lose my home and medical coverage and my son will back slide and probably never recover. I’m also a disabled veteran, so when do they cut those benefits? Will I lose the money I currently use to pay for food, too?

Tell me, was this worth it to own the libs? I want to yell at you MAGA folks but I don’t want to get banned here, so I’m being as nice as possible but I really hate you guys right now.

Edit: instead of pressing downvote why don’t you cowards speak?

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I'm sorry you're having to worry about this and I just want to encourage you to continue to speak out about your plight if your worries about Medicaid turn into reality. The only way for people to actually understand why the government needs to backstop folks is if the folks who are being backstopped communicate their experiences. At least then people can make more educated decisions on what they're voting for.

And at the risk of being that guy on the internet, one of the things that could be beneficial is making sure you have all of your documentation in order to prove that Medicaid for you and your family should not be interrupted. I'm 99.9% sure that Medicaid is not going anywhere, but I do think there is going to be a tremendous amount of scrutiny on enrollment and aggressive attempts to cut costs. Fair or not, the people who are organized, and can show proof of their situation, are going to be in a better position to argue their case than those who are incapable of getting organized. That includes making sure you download any statements or info from government websites because it's possible (likely?) some of those may go offline.

For other folks reading this, I'm making no political statement here. I'm taking the parent at face value, expressing sympathy and trying to be as helpful as an internet commenter can be (of course that's not very helpful).

No it’s very helpful to say those things, thank you. One of the most important things in this kind of situation is documentation.

I guess my anger and rage is also because not only is my family dependent on Medicaid but most of the families I know at my kid’s therapy center are on it. I am not just being personally affected but this affects so many in my community locally and as autism affected families. It’s enraging that the SV break things fast approach is being used for something that affects tens of millions of people and who rely on it for their literal lives in most cases, and some folks here are cheering it on!

One important point to understand the speed at which these actions are happening..

As the deadline for the current tax breaks draws near, there is increasing urgency around the administration push to extend and potentially expand these benefits, particularly for billionaires ;-)

Despite having the political upper hand through control of both the House and the Senate, there is a significant obstacle: The massive federal deficit.

To make these tax cuts feasible, the administration would need to offset the cost by cutting government spending. Unfortunately, much of that spending goes toward social programs, meaning millions of Americans who rely on government support could be adversely affected.

It's a shame the needed tax raises are not in discussion.

When I read about cuts to welfare and security, I'm usually angered against those who implement such cuts (I'm Italian, but this still stands whether it's us, eu, italy...).

Reading your comment, I just felt very sad. It's like you lived a reverse American dream.

I feel sorry for you. Feeling powerless it's a shitty feeling, especially if you have done everything right

I wouldn’t worry about it yet, at some point they’re going to impact the same population who showed up for J6; those folks are highly motivated under the right circumstances, and were unconditionally pardoned.

It’s hard not to worry, my kid’s life depends on Medicaid. I’d he doesn’t have therapy, he will not become a functioning adult, if that’s even possible anyways. As an adult, he’ll have even less protections than as a child with autism, especially in the “anti-DEI” world. Not sure why everyone is saying not to worry, in the face of this type of action by musk.

I’m not saying not to worry out of nihilism or lack of empathy, but of emotional health for you as the situation develops. Will it be fine? Lots of options available still to resolve this.

Thanks for clarifying, that makes sense, I should probably cool off and let others take the comment reigns.

I’m praying for it. My MAGA FIL seems too far gone but I can sense inside an ability to reflect and redirect.

Your dire predictions are a little premature. If we take them at their word, they're looking to reduce waste, and there's little reason to believe that treatment for autism falls into that category. Does anyone believe that there is no corruption or waste between the time of funding and delivery to a patient? Any dollars saved, and any efficiency gained, should be a net positive, no?

I have seen precious little reason to give Elon the benefit of the doubt on literally any topic. If he told me the sky was blue, I'd check for myself. The sheer breadth of things he's lied about over the past decade (from patently absurd release timelines, to promises of charity, to the cave sub fiasco, to the events of his own son's death) leaves me terrified of his access this week.

Read about autism treatment in red states. I’m not going from no evidence here, I’ve been deep into all the cracks, in trying to get my son from level 2 support up to a functioning human, I know what’s at stake and what each political party has actually done in their spheres of influence and I’m horrified at the things Republicans say about autism and care for autistic people. I don’t trust trump or musk as far as I can throw them tired together on this topic, and even if their word is to be accepted the downright reckless way they’ve been doing things is evidence enough that they don’t care about the damage they do.

Yes, I agree that they're taking the SV approach of "move fast and break things". They believe that government is severely broken, and this is their chance to reform it in significant ways. But obviously that's little comfort to you, if you get caught up in any breakage.

What I wish is that the Democrats had heard the plea of so many working class Americans, who were basically saying the same thing as you. "Your policies, (like mass immigration), make me fearful for the future, and I don't know how I will survive, or thrive". It was the dismissal of their fears, often with derision and insults, that pushed so many of them into the arms of Trump.

It was all manufactured by the Republican Party.

Honest people don't flagrantly break laws. It would be foolish to take these people at their word when we live in an extremely transparent democracy where the effectiveness of these programs was trivial to gather data on until a week ago when these hooligans took it offline.

I think it's safe to assume that's where things are headed slowly. After the treasury situation, I think its more than fair to assume they aren't going to be only bloat or operating in good faith when their stance is to get rid of the systems entirely.

Remember when he bought twitter and gutted it? Child safty department was cut to the bone and they barely got away without any legal issues. Numerous core services failed leaving twitter/x barely operating for days. And this was with the tenured professionals keeping things running, now he seems to be using a bunch of people with under 5 years experience in the work force let alone in these sectors/technology.

Waste to Elon is spending money on poor people instead of giving him a tax cut.

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