Over 100 residents gathered in Buckley Park in Durango and marched down the sidewalks on either side of downtown Main Avenue for an Indivisible Durango demonstration defending Medicaid.
The rally was a reaction to the Trump administration’s and GOP’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, that proposes cutting more than $600 billion from Medicaid, affecting millions of Americans’ access to health care.
Speakers called out private corporate insurers; called for single-payer health care system in Colorado in which the government acts as the insurer; and lambasted President Donald Trump, Republicans and Democrats alike for refusing to entertain the idea of a single-payer system.
Activist Deen Leonard said the Trump administration is attacking American social services and the health care system.
Her father, she said, contracted polio four months before the Salk vaccine to protect against polio was invented when she was 3 years old. Her father was paralyzed for nine years and her family went from middle class to relying on welfare.
“Thank God for the social safety net,” she said. “That’s one of my many passions, disability rights.”
Dr. Sarah Goodpastor, who specializes in internal medicine at Mercy Hospital in Durango, said the elected officials calling for major cuts to Medicaid don’t realize what they’re doing.
She said over 60% of Mercy’s patients have Medicare or Medicaid and she sees many patients who turn to the hospital during desperate times.
She referenced U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-Iowa) callous remark at a town hall on Friday in which she said “We’re all going to die,” in response to a member of the crowd who shouted “People are going to die,” if the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act passes in Congress.
“I would like her to come down and hang out with us and show her how people die,” Goodpastor said. “Because it doesn’t happen overnight. If you want to be totally gruesome, it happens over five years, and a lot of visits to the hospital and a lot of distress and a lot of problems.”
Ernst’s and the Trump administration’s attitude about Medicaid is “infuriating,” “ludicrous” and “amoral,” she said.
Republicans’ claim they are getting rid of government waste and fraud is also inaccurate from an economic perspective, she said.
She said hospitals try to get patients onto Medicaid when they qualify, but earning too much money can prevent someone from qualifying. A disease can cost someone on a strong commercial insurance plan $20,000 out of pocket. But that person, without Medicaid to acquire insulin, for example, will constantly end up in the hospital.
“They’re going to be in the hospital all the time. They're going to be in the ICU,” she said. “So if you don’t support these things, you’re going to end up having people overwhelm the system.”
Other speakers included Durango Dr. Erin Nealon; veteran and activist Mike Olsen; resident Harmony Morris, who lives with a disability and relies on a wheelchair; therapist Liza Tregillus; Guinn Unger, an advocate for single-payer health care in Colorado; and Michael Wilkinson, psychotherapist.
Morris said cutting Medicaid doesn’t save the government or taxpayers money – it shifts the burden onto emergency rooms, unpaid family caregivers and local systems “already stretched to the brink.”
“When Medicaid is cut, we all pay more – financially, morally and socially. I want you to imagine waking up tomorrow and being unable to move, not because your legs don’t work, but because the system decided that your mobility was too expensive,” she said. “That’s what’s on the table when Medicaid is under attack.”
She said she isn’t asking for pity, she is demanding justice.
“Let’s stop treating Medicaid as a line item and start treating it like the lifeline that it is, because when you protect Medicaid, you’re not just protecting people like me, you’re protecting your neighbor, your aging parents, your future and your humanity,” she said. “We are not a burden. We are a potential and potential deserves to move.”
cburney@durangoherald.com
A previous version of this article erroneously attributed Dr. Sarah Goodpastor’s statements to another doctor who spoke at the rally. Goodpastor also clarified over 60% of Mercy’s patients are on Medicare or Medicaid.
