“Fund Care, Not Billionaires”: Nurses, Teachers and Concerned Residents Protest at Kevin Kiley’s Rocklin Office
-Special to PlacerDems blog by William Forseth, former Editor-in-Chief with the American River Current and Roseville resident.
If you drove down LoneTree Boulevard in Rocklin late in the morning of July 1st, and you passed by Kevin Kiley’s office, you’d have seen a familiar sight. You’d have seen signs protesting the cuts to Medi-Cal being complimented with a symphony of supportive horns from passing passenger cars and work trucks. You would’ve seen nurses, teachers, the fabric of our lives. The educators of our children and the providers of comfort to the infirm. People who see the Big Beautiful Bill as an attack on their livelihoods, and the lives of the communities they support.
What you wouldn’t see, and what his constituency has come to expect for anyone not prepared to cut a four figure check, is an appearance of Kiley himself. Similar to the countless teleconferences in lieu of actual appearances in front of his voting bloc, Kiley is nowhere to be found as the Medi-Cal programs that support 175,000 residents of District 3 are to be in jeopardy by a budget bill with his signature on it.
In ruby red shirts, National Nurses United came to say “Fund care, Not billionaires,” citing the proposed Medicaid cuts that will go to fund tax breaks for billionaires. What kind of changes are expected for Medi-Cal when over $28 billion of federal funding is removed from the California healthcare system? Recipients can expect to have their eligibility reviewed every 6 months, as compared to yearly as it currently works. Medi-Cal recipients such as working parents, those currently searching for employment, and the disabled will need to dedicate twice as much time per year toward reenrollment, often at the cost of time that could be better spent working so they can lift themselves up or spend valuable time with their children or grandchildren.
The rural communities within District 3 will see the impact of the cuts to Medi-Cal when the Ridgecrest Regional Hospital in Kern County has $5.5 million removed from its coffers, an area where OVER HALF of the 914,000 residents rely on Medicare coverage to stay healthy and able to provide for their family
Billions of dollars in SNAP funding will also be cut, and with that funding, food that many people rely on will disappear. CalFresh will find more difficulty providing nutrition for the most vulnerable members of our community, or be able to provide nutrition in rural areas. With the cuts in Medi-Cal, many District 3 residents who work as nurses, or government employees, or work at a company that provides goods and resources for the healthcare field may be one pink slip away from needing to use public resources to secure a nutritious meal for them and their families. No matter how much they work and how important it is to provide for their household, their safety net will be removed by the same mechanism that may lead to their dismissal.
Throughout the peaceful protest, a black clad procession walked along the path of the protest like a funeral for liberty, carrying an ominous message about authoritarianism. With executive orders and divisive rhetoric from the White House attempting to dismantle the Democratic System from the inside, the freedom for their procession may be short lived if our rights are taken away with our tax dollars.
What your teachers, and nurses, and long term care providers are warning us of, is that we as a community need to let our representatives like Kevin Kiley know that we don’t want our healthcare to vanish so billionaires’ crypto accounts can grow fatter. Reach out to Kevin Kiley, or better yet, show him how you feel next time his name comes up on the ballot box.
Photos courtesy of Tom Blackburn and Pro Bono Photography
-Special to PlacerDems blog by William Forseth, former Editor-in-Chief with the American River Current and Roseville resident.
