Medicaid is a lifeline for this Charlotte family. Cuts could mean ‘financial ruin’
Emma Staggs’ mother couldn’t hold her for 28 days after she was born. Her skin was too delicate to touch.
“I could actually see her heart beating through her chest,” her mother, Stacy Staggs, said.
Emma weighed just 1 pound, 5 ounces when she came into the world in September 2013. Her twin sister, Sara, weighed 2 pounds. The twins were born at just 27 weeks and 4 days gestation when their mother experienced atypical preeclampsia – Staggs’ liver and brain were dangerously swollen.
“The doctors said, ‘We’ve got to deliver them right now,’” Staggs said.
Today, both girls have scars from their first few days, when they fought harder medical battles than many will fight in a lifetime. The medical claims from their time in neonatal intensive care alone totaled around $1 million. Since then, their claims have reached nearly $5 million, Stacy said. But they’re alive.
“They’ve got battle scars,” Stacy said, sitting in Emma’s bedroom covered in pink florals at their home in north Charlotte. Emma’s nurse was braiding her hair.
And there’s a battle brewing in Congress that could affect the girls. Emma receives Medicaid services in and outside of school that provide therapy and help pay for special meals, among other things. A measure passed by the U.S. House last week calls for potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid.
Republicans have called worries about cuts to Medicaid “fear mongering.” The Staggses are worried about their way of life.
Health care needs
Most days begin the same way. When Emma’s nurse arrives around 7 a.m., she helps her get bathed and dressed before putting her in an airway clearance therapy vest. Emma has chronic lung disease, and the vest helps break up congestion that may have built up overnight. She doesn’t mind it much and uses the time to watch TV or listen to music.
“The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh” from 1977 is her favorite. Recently, she’s also been performing “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.” When she dances, her smile takes up her whole face.
After being intubated so long at birth, Emma has bilateral vocal cord paralysis, and she uses a tablet to communicate. She also had reconstructive surgery on her airway in 2022. While she can now breathe normally, she receives all her meals and nutrition through a feeding tube since swallowing isn’t safe for her.
Emma’s medical needs are more extensive than Sara’s, and she qualifies for Medicaid, which covers what is not covered by the family’s primary insurance. The program is a lifeline, Stacy said. Emma’s formula alone would cost around $4,000 a month if not covered by Medicaid.
“Emma’s life is Medicaid,” Stacy said. “Without it, we’d go into debt. We might have to sell the house and live with my mother.”
The girls start school or therapy around mid-morning, depending on the day. A teacher comes to the house to do individual instruction with the girls as part of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ Exceptional Children program.
Physical therapists work with the girls on therapy days, and once a week they get to go to a farm in their neighborhood and ride therapy horses, which help them build core strength and coordination – aside from being fun.
Many school districts, including CMS, get reimbursed by Medicaid for services such as speech, occupational and physical therapy as well as nursing and behavioral health for students with special needs. Each student in the Exceptional Children program has their particular needs spelled out in an individualized education program, or IEP.
The proposed cuts raise massive questions about how school districts would provide services for families like the Staggses.
CMS would still be required by law to provide the education-related services designated in students’ IEPs — but potentially without the $16 million it currently gets annually from Medicaid.
Medicaid cuts in Congress
The U.S. House of Representatives adopted a budget plan Thursday that calls for sweeping spending cuts many worry will cut into Medicaid benefits. It passed by a vote of 216-214 — largely along party lines. The Senate approved its own version of the plan.
The budget blueprint passed by the Senate calls for $4 billion in cuts over the next decade, while the House aims for $1.5 trillion.
House cuts include a directive for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid, to cut $880 billion in spending.
NC Republican lawmakers previously argued the directive doesn’t explicitly call for cuts to Medicaid and concerns about the program being gutted – in part raised by the CMS Board of Education – were “not based in reality.”
“The House Budget Resolution does not include any specific programmatic cuts to Medicaid or school nutrition programs,” Charlotte-area Representative Mark Harris told Queen City News in February. “The resolution directs committees to reform programs and eliminate fraud, waste and abuse.”
In House floor speech last week, Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican whose district covers parts of the Triad and northwestern N.C., said Democrats and the media are “fear mongering” about what Republicans’ budget resolution entails.
“You will hear all manner of identity groups that Democrats will claim the budget resolution will hurt,” Foxx said before Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, warned about “the biggest cut to Medicaid in American history.”
“You will hear them say that Republicans are abandoning the middle class and cutting benefits. None of that is even remotely true,” Foxx said.
Rep. Pat Harrigan, a Charlotte-area Republican, said in a news release last week the plan is not the final bill and and there are “historic reductions in federal spending” as well as protections for programs like Social Security and Medicare.
However, data from the Congressional Budget Office show it will be impossible to reach the $880 billion target without cuts to either Medicaid or Medicare. Even if the House Committee on Energy and Commerce cut all its other spending aside from Medicaid and Medicare, it would still need to find around $300 billion more in cuts to meet the target laid out in the House’s budget resolution.
“This reckless bill will force people to go hungry,” Rep. Alma Adams, a Charlotte Democrat, said in a news release. “It will cause families to go into debt. It will cost lives by stripping healthcare away from our most vulnerable communities. This budget is reckless and harmful, and anyone who voted for it has abandoned our working- and middle-class families.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson has said cuts to Medicaid will target waste and fraud.
Congress is currently out on a two-week recess.
Medicaid services in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools
If CMS Medicaid funding were cut, the district could have to find millions of dollars to fill the gap.
CMS gets about $16 million annually in Medicaid funding. The number is primarily based on the needs of students requiring intensive services and therapies in addition to standard Exceptional Children services, according to Heather R. Lemmons, CMS executive director of EC programs.
As of December, CMS serves 17,245 students with IEPs in the Exceptional Children program. Approximately 3,000 of those have more complex needs, and they’re supported by about 800 specialized staff members.
“Medicaid funding is available to support all of these students, depending on their specific needs,” Lemmons told The Charlotte Observer.
The support could include full-time nurses, devices, special transportation and therapy for speech, hearing or visual impairments.
The CMS board expressed concern about the cuts in February and sent a letter to local representatives warning the budget resolution could result in cuts to programs CMS students depend on.
“Providing a high-quality public education to all children is our mission,” the letter said. “To achieve that mission, we need to ensure that children have access to all the resources they need to excel, not only for themselves, but for their families, and future generations of well-educated citizens.”
Meanwhile, families like the Staggses are bracing for what could be “financial ruin.”
“Without Medicaid to cover things like therapy, nursing, equipment, formula … it puts Emma’s life in an hourglass,” Staggs said.
This story was originally published April 15, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Medicaid is a lifeline for this Charlotte family. Cuts could mean ‘financial ruin’."
