They’re Cutting Medicare. Here’s What That Actually Means for Your Family.
My mother didn’t ask for much from this country.
She came here as a refugee — legally and honorably — with three small children in her arms and a resilient spirit. No English. No connections. No roadmap. She worked. She stretched every dollar until it apologized. She raised children the way immigrants do: with sacrifice as the love language, with the quiet belief that everything she gave up was an investment in us and in this country’s promise.
In her later years, Medicare is what keeps her going. Not as charity. Not as a handout. As a promise — one this country made to her after decades of contributing to it. She paid into it her whole working life. She earned it the hard way.
And then there is Papa Steve.
My stepfather is a Korean War veteran. He came from nothing, built himself into something through sheer will and honest work, and has lived his entire life by a simple code: do right by others, show up, don’t complain. He is one of the most honorable men I have ever known. The kind of American this country was built on and too often forgets.
Medicare is what makes it possible for Papa Steve to get the care he needs. Because at his age, medical needs don’t ask for your permission or your budget — they arrive. And I remember the times my parents looked at the out-of-pocket cost, weighed how serious it really was, and decided to skip the treatment.
That is not dignity. That is not the promise this country made to the people who built it.
And it is not just the elderly who are caught in this trap.
My niece is a young woman with Type 1 diabetes. She is smart, capable, and ambitious — exactly the kind of person this economy should be rewarding. But she is not free. She cannot leave her job to pursue something better, something that pays more, something that matches who she is and what she can do. Not because she lacks the courage or the talent. Because she cannot afford to lose her health insurance for a single day. Insulin is not optional. Continuous glucose monitoring is not optional. For someone with Type 1 diabetes, these are not lifestyle choices — they are survival. And in this country, survival is attached to your employer.
That is a form of bondage we do not talk about enough. We call it the “job lock” problem, and it quietly suffocates the ambition of millions of Americans — young workers, caregivers, people with chronic conditions — who cannot take a risk on themselves because the system has made their health dependent on staying exactly where they are. My niece should be free to grow. She should be free to build. Instead, she is making the same kind of calculation Papa Steve makes — just from the other end of life.
When I hear politicians talk about cutting Medicare and Medicaid to “reduce the deficit,” I think about my mother. I think about Papa Steve. And then I think about the tens of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries right here in CA-40 — your parents, your neighbors, maybe you — each one doing that same quiet math. Wondering if this time, the cost of getting help is more than they can carry.
What is being proposed right now is not reform. It is reduction. Hundreds of billions in Medicaid cuts over the next decade. In California, Medi-Cal covers one in three residents. These cuts mean fewer nursing home beds, less in-home care for disabled adults, reduced coverage for children in low-income families. The language sounds responsible — “efficiency,” “program integrity,” “fiscal discipline” — but what it means in practice is: less care for more people.
And here is what makes this unconscionable: these cuts are being made at the same time Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill — a law the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office confirmed adds $3.4 trillion to the national deficit over ten years, rising to over $4 trillion with interest. The bill slashes tax revenue by $4.5 trillion, overwhelmingly benefiting corporations and the wealthiest Americans, while gutting Medicaid to partially cover the cost. They are taking from my mom’s care, Papa Steve’s care — from your grandmother’s care — to fund a tax cut for a hedge fund. I will say that plainly because no one in Washington will.
The question I hear everywhere I go is always the same: then how do we pay for it without cutting the people who need it most?
That is the right question. And it has real answers.
The first place to look is where the money is already being wasted. There is a broken federal budget rule called “use it or lose it” — agencies must spend their full budget before the fiscal year closes or risk losing those funds the following year. So they spend. Fast. On anything. This past September, the Pentagon spent a record $93.4 billion in a single month. A government watchdog documented the receipts: $6.9 million on lobster tail, $15 million on ribeye steak, $225 million on furniture, a $98,000 Steinway grand piano for an Air Force general’s home. This happens across every department, every year, from both parties. With your help, I plan to reform this — because that money belongs in our parent’s healthcare, not in a piano for someone’s living room.
Medicare also needs the full power to negotiate drug prices. The program already started under the Inflation Reduction Act — and it is working. The first ten negotiated drugs are saving an estimated $6 billion a year. The next fifteen drugs taking effect in 2027 are projected to save $8.5 to $12 billion more per year. This is real money going back into coverage instead of pharmaceutical profit margins. However, the One Big Beautiful Bill has already moved to weaken this program by broadening exemptions for drug companies. That is not fiscal responsibility. That is choosing the pharmaceutical industry over your family.
I also believe we need an honest national conversation about a public healthcare option — a government-administered plan that competes alongside private insurance, giving every American access to affordable care without forcing anyone off coverage they have and value. This is not a radical idea. It is a practical one. It fills the gaps that leave too many people behind — the self-employed, the gig workers, the families one medical crisis away from bankruptcy. The goal is not to dismantle what works. The goal is to stop punishing people for getting sick.
Healthcare is not a political abstraction to me. It is my mother. It is Papa Steve. It is my niece, who deserves to chase her potential without her diagnosis deciding her destiny. It is the quiet, impossible calculation that too many families in this district are making right now — between their health and everything else they were supposed to be able to want.
I am not going to Washington to manage the decline of a promise this country made to its people. I am going to stand for it. The way a daughter stands up for what her mother earned. The way a family shows up for the veteran who answered when his country called. And the way an aunt advocates for a young woman who should be free to become whoever she is meant to be.
(A full breakdown of the One Big Beautiful Bill and what it means for your family is coming in an upcoming article.)
Ballots arrive May 4th. Your vote is a statement about what kind of country we are choosing to be. VOTE INDEPENDENT
With care and commitment —
Nina Linh
Independent Candidate, CA-40