Opinion: Medicaid is holding our community together — we can't let it slip away

Yahoo

17-05-2025

Every day as mayor, I witness stories in our community — of struggle, of strength and of second chances.
I think of the young mother I met who, after years of substance use and homelessness, was able to get her life back on track after completing a residential treatment program. She's working again. Her children are back with her. Their family has been given a second chance at life together.
I think of the man with mental health challenges who used to cycle in and out of jail, emergency rooms and shelters. He is now in recovery thanks to our Assertive Community Treatment team funded through Medicaid, and has a case manager, a place to live and stability for the first time in years.
These stories aren't rare anymore. They are becoming our new reality. Because we've decided, as a community, to invest in care. We've decided that people matter. And that no one should fall through the cracks simply because they're struggling with addiction, mental illness or poverty.
Medicaid is a lifeline. Yes, it's health insurance. But in Salt Lake County, it's also what allows us to keep families together, reduce homelessness, lower crime, and bring dignity back to lives that had lost it. It's what helps us build a stronger, safer, more compassionate Utah.
That's why talk of cutting Medicaid — or shifting more of the cost to states — keeps me up at night.
In Salt Lake County, Medicaid expansion currently helps fund nearly 500 residential treatment beds for people experiencing substance use disorders. It's allowed us to grow our Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) teams to serve 300 more people and to support the opening of the Kem and Carolyn Gardner Mental Health Crisis Center and other crisis services — programs that provide wraparound support to Utahns with serious mental illness who are frequent users of emergency services, hospitals, homeless shelters and jails.
The price of cuts to that expansion wouldn't just be felt in budgets. It would be felt on our streets, in our jails, in our families. We would likely lose those 500 treatment beds for people in recovery. The Mental Health Crisis Center could be forced to turn people away. Housing supports would dry up. Our ability to help people reenter society after incarceration would be gutted. And the people left behind would be more likely to end up back in jail, back on the streets or worse.
This isn't just about numbers. It's about who we are.
In Utah, we believe in personal responsibility, but also in giving people the tools they need to rise. We believe in family. We believe in public safety. We believe that our community is only as strong as the support we offer in our hardest moments.
Medicaid protects that. It protects our shared values. It protects the investments we've made in healing, in hope and in people. It's the bridge that connects a troubled past with a possible future. We need that bridge to stay strong.
We are at a turning point. We've built momentum in our fight against homelessness, in how we support mental health, in how we treat addiction not as a crime, but as a condition. We're finally doing things right.
But if we pull Medicaid out from under all of that, we don't just lose progress — we lose people. We lose families. We lose safety. We potentially lose our community as we know it.
As Salt Lake County Mayor, I am calling on our leaders — both in Washington and here in Utah — to protect Medicaid. To protect the values that make Utah the place we're proud to call home.
Let's not tear down what we've built together. Let's stand up for care, for compassion and for the preservation of our community.