Medicaid is complicated. As you know, it’s the state-federal program that provides funding coverage for a range of healthcare and other services for people primarily with low incomes and disabilities. And with annual expenses of $880 billion covering more than 72 million Americans, it’s also big.

So, it can be hard to know how to think about the proposed cuts to Medicaid that are in the headlines right now, even though these same ideas have been floating around for years (and have been rejected time and again because they would be ineffective at saving money and harmful to people who depend on the program).

One way to think about all this is in terms of “Levers” and “Lives” – the Levers are the cause-and-effect outcomes of changes at the system and program level; Lives are the impacts to real people who depend on Medicaid for not only their healthcare, but a whole range of other supports that help them live with dignity, often during the hardest moments of their lives.

The Levers: What Changes to Medicaid Could Mean for Systems and Budgets

Several ways to cut Medicaid are being considered within Congress, including implementing work requirements, decreasing the federal match for Medicaid expansion and moving to per capita caps on federal funding for the program.

If some combination of these cuts ends up being implemented, the state of Colorado could lose more than $1 billion in federal funding for healthcare expenditures. This is on top of the current $1 billion budget deficit the state is already working hard to close. A doubling of the budget deficit would likely mean cuts to other critical programs, having ripple effects on people who don’t even have coverage through Medicaid.

What does all this mean for WellPower? As the largest nonprofit community mental health center in the state, WellPower serves more than 22,000 children, families and adults each year across Denver. More than 18,000 of these people receive coverage for their care through Medicaid at any given time. And because Medicaid covers a whole lot more than mental health, this coverage also provides for a full range of other supports.

If the changes to Medicaid that are currently being discussed end up being implemented, thousands of the children and adults currently served by WellPower will lose their healthcare coverage. This would compound an already dire situation that started with the national Medicaid unwind: continuing to provide care without receiving funding or risk being unable to serve many of the people who need us the most.

The modest cost savings the country might see from kicking people off Medicaid would be far overshadowed by the scope of suffering experienced by the people who will suddenly find themselves without healthcare – all through no fault of their own. Speaking of the actual impact on people, let’s talk about the Lives.

The Lives: How Cuts to Medicaid Could Impact Real People Who Need Help

All this talk of numbers and scale risks losing track of the ultimate importance of Medicaid: real, human lives. It might be one thing to talk about thousands of people in Denver losing mental health services, but it’s another to look into the eyes of people who have been able to recover because of what Medicaid has meant for them.

Here are just a few. We encourage you to read their stories in their own words and to think about whether these are the people who should lose eligibility for Medicaid, all for the sake of tax breaks for the wealthiest people in the country.

Is Medicaid Popular?

Setting aside the human component, what’s the big deal, anyway? Isn’t Medicaid just another bloated, wasteful government program that no one actually likes? Nope.

Medicaid is incredibly popular. It covers more than a fifth of Americans. More than half of people surveyed by KFF, a nonpartisan health research group, say that someone in their family received coverage through Medicaid, and a plurality wanted Medicaid funding to be increased – not cut. And 98 percent of Democrats and 94 percent of Republicans said it was important for their communities. If Medicaid were a political candidate, it would win an election so overwhelmingly that we’d have serious concerns about our democracy (we’d be wrong, though, because Medicaid is actually that popular).

We Have to Act Now to Protect Medicaid

It often feels like problems this big don’t have solutions that are within our hands. After all, what can a few concerned citizens and mental health workers do? Turns out, quite a bit – when we act together and at the right time. With elected leaders in Congress working through temporary budget deals to keep the government from shutting down, now is the time to make our voices heard before cuts to Medicaid come up for a vote.

If you want to join us and millions of people across the country in telling our elected officials not to slash the behavioral health coverage people in our communities rely on, you can look up your senators and representative and get suggested messaging points from the National Council for Mental Well-Being here.

Medicaid has been a foundational part of our healthcare system and a critical lifeline to mental health care for decades. If we don’t act to protect it and the people who rely on it for their health, we might lose it. And for people like Kitty, Jahmon and Rob – the children in your neighborhood school, the families picking up essentials in your local grocery store, your fellow commuters on their way to a hard day’s work – cutting Medicaid to save a small percentage of the federal budget would come with a cost that is hard to imagine.