President Trump has cut funding for Medicaid, and by doing so he is effectively cutting funding for Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which is a program that is part of Medicaid. The president recognized that he should not take healthcare away from innocent and helpless kids, so he told Congress to find a solution to this problem. But Congress being Congress, they took their good old time and have effectively run out of time to come up with a solution. So now, without government funding for the program, states are running out of money really fast. Soon, these kids won’t get the help that they need.
According to CNN, Medicaid covers one in three American children, for a total of 37 million children total. About 8.9 million of those underprivileged children are enrolled in CHIP specifically. Now with Trump’s intense budget cuts, none of these 37 million children will get the healthcare they need, which is absolutely absurd. Congress should have put aside their differences and made finding a solution for CHIP a bipartisan issue, for the kids’ sake.
Not only are babies and small children losing access to care, college aged kids like us are as well, as children up to age 19 can be eligible for CHIP.  Many of us have experienced being ill, getting hurt or having a certain medication that we needed to take. But picture having no way to afford that, and not knowing what to do about it. At the most fundamental level, not allowing a person to be healthy is taking a right away from them. Someone cannot live their life and pursue happiness if they are too sick to do so.
Some may say that it is not their problem if other people can’t afford care. But it is not the children’s fault if they have been born into an underprivileged situation. Just because they were born at a lower social status does not make them any less human or any less deserving of help. We must rally together and force our Congress to find a solution and to help our kids.