OtherWords
Hanna Homestead
03/12/2025
The paper sheet crinkled under me as I shifted on the vinyl examination table. The doctor paused. “Hmm,” she said quietly.
This was January 2021. I’d patched together a few gigs since completing a masters degree program the previous year, but was still struggling to find full-time work at the height of the pandemic.
A nagging feeling told me not to delay my annual well-woman exam again, having skipped it in 2020 due to COVID-19 and being uninsured. And I’m glad I went — the doctor found a concerning level of precancerous cervical cells.
Cervical cancer was once a common cause of cancer death in the U.S., but increased access to preventive care over the last several decades has cut death rates by more than half. Federal funding for Medicaid, which helps states expand health care services to low-income populations, has contributed to this success.
So it was for me, too. Although I was unemployed, I was able to access the initial screening and follow-up treatments through Medicaid. (State Medicaid programs can have different names. In my state, Wisconsin, it’s BadgerCare.)
Thanks to this coverage, my case was detected early. I made a full recovery and subsequently landed a job with health care benefits. However, if it had been up to Republican lawmakers, this story may have had a very different ending. With Trump’s support, nearly every single House Republican voted to pass a budget resolution that cuts an unimaginable $2 trillion from social services, especially Medicaid.
