The Skillman Foundation

Medicaid cuts and efforts to dismantle education are a direct attack on kids.

This isn’t the first time healthcare has become political.

Republican President Teddy Roosevelt proposed universal healthcare and later, another Republican President Dwight Eisenhower also tried to make this happen. Fifteen years ago this week, President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. This was a friction-filled moment of great debate. Many wanted more universal healthcare options; for others, this required too much change in the insurance marketplace.

In the end, it was a transformative act that ultimately helped millions of Americans gain access to healthcare. The law did more than expand coverage — it prohibited discrimination against people with preexisting conditions, eliminated lifetime benefit caps, and allowed young people to stay on their parents’ insurance plans through age 26.

It also expanded Medicaid coverage to millions more Americans, including hundreds of thousands in Michigan. Today, nearly 1 million children in Michigan rely on Medicaid — that’s nearly half of all the kids in the state, and one in four Michiganders overall. Medicaid covers check-ups, asthma care, mental health support, and more. It’s a lifeline. 

Now, that lifeline is under threat. 

Congress and the current administration are proposing steep cuts to a program that aims to provide care and support to many, especially our youngest. At the same time, some lawmakers want to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, threatening the very infrastructure designed to ensure our children learn and thrive.

Across the aisle, we care about children – ours, our neighbors’, those in rural towns and city neighborhoods alike. But these attacks on healthcare and education are an attack on countless kids, especially those already facing barriers due to poverty, disability, or systemic inequities.

Here’s what many people don’t realize: Medicaid is the fourth-largest source of federal funding for K–12 public schools. A whopping 86% of school districts use Medicaid to fund school health staff, including school nurses, psychologists, occupational and physical therapists, and speech-language pathologists. What’s more, 59% use it for mental and behavioral health services and 46% use it to purchase equipment and technology for students with disabilities. When Medicaid gets cut, schools lose staff, programs, and essential services. Kids lose the support they need to learn and thrive. Parents, teachers, and entire communities carry the burden.

And while this is a problem for all Michiganders, make no mistake, small towns will be hit the hardest. 

Of the 41 Michigan counties where over 20% of residents are covered by Medicaid, 37 are rural. In those places, school-based care isn’t optional — it’s often the only care available. 

Pair Medicaid cuts with eliminating the Department of Education, and we’re not trimming government — we’re gutting the very systems that help kids grow into healthy, educated adults. We are destroying the scaffolding that supports the youngest and most vulnerable among us.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t about saving money. It’s about eroding our public institutions and undermining our collective responsibility to care for children, particularly those who are poor, disabled, or marginalized.

How far is too far? How many children’s lives will Congress sacrifice to save a buck?

Let our representatives, our governor, and your neighbors know where you stand on cutting Medicaid and the Department of Education.

We need to nourish our children’s hearts and minds now more than ever. And there’s no way around it, when we slash Medicaid and dismantle education, it’s our kids who pay the price.