Medicaid provides preventative care to keep people out of the hospital, saving the individual and state money.
To help others understand the impact of Medicaid, I wanted to share my family’s story. I’m a part-time college student, working through college, and I’ve used Medicaid to help provide the necessary healthcare services to keep me healthy while I pursue my college degree.
A few years ago while still playing high school sports, I broke my arm. Medicaid helped pay for the surgeries I needed to heal my arm, and I wouldn’t have been able to pay for my recovery without Medicaid. For my family, Medicaid saved the life of a child born with a heart defect, by covering his lifesaving medication.
Its important Hoosiers understand that Hoosiers from all walks of life rely on Medicaid. I’m one of the nearly 80 percent of Medicaid recipients who are working or in a family with individuals working.
Medicaid is a critical investment in the future, enabling people the opportunity to be active and reach their goals. Medicaid provides preventative care to keep people out of the hospital, saving the individual and state money.
It’s the right financial decision to keep improving Indiana’s Medicaid program, and it happens to be the right thing to do serve the thousands of Hoosier recipients.
Alexis Merchant
Indianapolis
Downtown dwellers need a grocery store
“Downtown Indy soon to be a food desert” popped into my mind when I read that Marsh will close the two Downtown locations in two months if someone doesn’t purchase them. We have celebrated the influx of people moving Downtown and now they have no place to shop for food. I know personally someone living Downtown that does not drive but can walk to the New Jersey Street location. What about the people who live in the John Barton Apartments and Lugar Towers? The city needs to do something about this maybe in conjunction with the Riley Area Development Corporation.
Lydia Brasher
Indianapolis
Transportation plan bad for Indianapolis, country
While candidate Donald Trump promised improved rail service, the Trump administration’s proposed budget would eliminate the entire long-distance Amtrak network, including the thrice-weekly Cardinal service through Indianapolis. And its demise would dramatically increase costs for the state-supported Hoosier State, which operates between between Indianapolis and Chicago on the four days the Cardinal doesn’t make the run.
Amtrak’s Beech Grove Shops, where cars and locomotives are repaired and maintained, and which employ 522 people, would certainly be threatened should the budget proposal go through. And the Indianapolis Distribution Center, employing 30 people, would also be in danger of closing.
The Trump budget team seems to have caved in to the reactionary Heritage Foundation, which has consistently opposed public transit. In addition to dismantling the Amtrak national network, the budget plan would make drastic cuts to the TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grant program and the New Starts public transit program. It is, in short, a plan to decimate American public transportation. Please let your senators and representatives know that the plan is bad for Indianapolis and bad for America.
Stephen Wylder
Elkhart