MADISON, Wis. —  Last week, one of Rep. Bryan Steil’s constituents, Emma Widmar, wrote an op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel sharing her personal experience with multiple chronic illnesses and how Bryan Steil’s vote to gut Medicaid through the “Big Ugly Bill” threatens her access to life-saving medications and could bankrupt her family. Slashing Medicaid wasn’t enough for Republicans, either—new proposals from the Trump administration now threaten services that Widmar depends on for daily care to help keep her alive. 
 

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Medicaid is my lifeline. New federal rule could take it away
By: Emma Rose Widmar | 8/14/2026
 

I was an elite volleyball player. I was in half a dozen extracurriculars. And then, as a teenager, my body started failing me in ways doctors couldn’t explain for years.

Eventually I got answers: Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, Hereditary Angioedema, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, neuropathy, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, and after everything my illnesses put me through, Complex PTSD. I went from a kid who did everything to a disabled adult child who relies on others just to get through the day.

I am 27. For nine years, Medicaid has been the reason I have been able to survive.

Before I was enrolled, I was covered through my mom’s insurance as a public school educator. It wasn’t enough. My middle-class family maxed out credit cards and refinanced our home just to keep up. In 2020, the Aging and Disability Resource Center of Racine County estimated my medications alone cost $2 million a year. Today, even with Medicaid, my out-of-pocket costs still run about $15,000 a year. Without it, my family would be looking at bankruptcy, or worse.

Medicaid doesn’t just pay claims. It funds IRIS, the program that lets me hire and direct my own caregivers, at little to no cost, so I have a say in who takes care of me and how. On disability income of about $12,000 a year, I could never afford that kind of care on my own. IRIS is the difference between me living with dignity and me losing my independence entirely.
 

No one should have to fight this hard to stay alive
 

I know how fragile all of this is. I know that the line between “healthy enough to work” and “too sick to survive without help” isn’t always as clean as it looks on paper, and that people with cancer, HIV, multiple sclerosis, and other serious conditions are having to prove, over and over, that they’re sick enough to deserve care. That should never be the bar. No one should have to fight this hard just to stay alive.

That’s why a new federal rule moving through the Trump administration right now should worry every Wisconsinite who depends on Medicaid or who loves someone who does. Republicans are taking away Medicaid coverage from people who are already sick, and they’re doing it to help pay for tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations. People with serious, complex illnesses are at risk of losing coverage in the middle of treatment. That means losing access to the medication, the treatment, and the caregivers that keep them alive.

I don’t know what my life looks like without Medicaid. I know what it looked like before I had it: my family drowning in debt to keep me alive. I don’t want that for one more Wisconsin family.
 

Steil voted for Republican tax law that cut Medicaid
 

Rep. Bryan Steil voted for the Republican tax law that already cut Medicaid by the largest amount in our nation’s history. Now this administration is writing the fine print on how those cuts get carried out. Patients, healthcare professionals, and advocacy organizations across the country spoke out against this rule change during the public comment period, but Steil remained silent and refused to stand up for his constituents who rely on Medicaid.

Medicaid isn’t a handout. It’s what lets people like me live, and what lets so many others get well enough to work and thrive. I urge the Trump administration to take the concerns with this rule change seriously and make the necessary changes to protect Medicaid recipients across the country.