What Trump’s Medicaid Cuts Mean for Black Women’s Bodies — And What to Do Right Now
By Denise Tureaud | Health & Wellness Contributor, Black Source Media
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TL;DR — The Short Version
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I want to talk to you today about something that is happening right now — quietly, in budget documents and congressional hearings — that will land loudly in Black women’s bodies if we do not pay attention.
The proposed Medicaid cuts moving through Washington are not an abstract policy debate. They are a direct threat to the health of our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, and ourselves. And because this is a health column, I am going to tell you exactly what is at stake in terms of what it does to your body — and then I am going to tell you what you can do about it.
Because that is what we do. We get informed. We get prepared. And we take care of each other.
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📋 Key Points
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Why Are Medicaid Cuts a Black Women’s Health Emergency?
Let’s start with the number that should stop you in your tracks: approximately one in five Black women in America depends on Medicaid for their healthcare coverage. That is not a fringe population. That is our community. That is the woman in the next pew, the auntie at the cookout, the neighbor who babysits your kids.
Medicaid is not a luxury program. For Black women across this country — particularly in Southern states like Louisiana where Medicaid expansion has been hard-won and is now under threat — it is the only door into the healthcare system that exists. When that door closes, Black women do not find another door. They go without care. And going without care, for us, has consequences that are documented, severe, and too often fatal.
The Trump administration’s proposed cuts would achieve their reductions through work requirements, eligibility restrictions, and block grants to states — mechanisms that sound technical but translate directly into people losing coverage. Independent analyses project that millions of Americans could lose Medicaid under these proposals. Black women, who are enrolled at higher rates and who have fewer alternative coverage options, would be among the hardest hit.
What Happens to Your Body When Medicaid Disappears?
I want to make this personal, because policy becomes real in the body.
If you are pregnant and on Medicaid, losing that coverage means losing your prenatal visits. It means no gestational diabetes screening, no blood pressure monitoring, no ultrasounds, no provider relationship at all during the most medically vulnerable months of your life. Black women already die in childbirth at three times the rate of white women — a crisis driven largely by the failure of the healthcare system to take our symptoms seriously and provide timely, quality care. Medicaid is what makes any prenatal care possible for millions of us. Cutting it does not reduce the need for that care. It eliminates the access to it.
If you are managing hypertension — and nearly 57% of Black women over 40 have high blood pressure — losing Medicaid means losing your medication refills, your monitoring visits, your relationship with a provider who knows your history. Unmanaged hypertension leads to stroke, kidney failure, and heart disease. These are not distant risks. They are the leading causes of death in our community.
If you have fibroids — and Black women develop uterine fibroids at two to three times the rate of white women, at earlier ages and with more severe symptoms — Medicaid is often what funds the diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment that keeps fibroid disease from becoming a life-altering emergency.
If you are navigating the mental health effects of living through what we are living through right now — the political assaults, the economic pressure, the daily accumulation of racial stress that our bodies register even when our minds try to push it aside — Medicaid-funded mental health services may be the only mental healthcare you have access to. Cutting those services does not make the stress disappear. It just leaves you to carry it alone.
Reproductive Rights Are a Black Women’s Health Issue — Not Just a Political One
There is a tendency in mainstream conversations about reproductive rights to discuss them in terms of legal access — Roe, state bans, trigger laws. All of that matters. But I want to talk about what reproductive healthcare actually means in physical terms for Black women, and what losing Medicaid-funded access to it costs our bodies.
Medicaid funds family planning services — contraception counseling, birth control, STI screening — for millions of Black women who do not have private insurance. It funds cervical cancer screenings that catch the HPV-related cell changes that, caught early, are entirely treatable and, caught late, are often fatal. It funds postpartum care — those critical weeks after birth when Black women are statistically most at risk of complications and maternal death — that women without Medicaid coverage frequently skip because they cannot afford out-of-pocket costs.
These are not political abstractions. These are appointments that save lives. When the funding disappears, the appointments disappear. When the appointments disappear, the conditions that should have been caught go undetected. And Black women pay for that with our bodies.
Related: Black Women and Political Stress 2026: How to Protect Your Health Right Now
What Can You Do Right Now? Here Is Your Action List.
Sister, I know how heavy this feels. I am not going to tell you to just breathe and stay positive — because what is happening to healthcare in this country is real and it deserves a real response. But I also know that our community has always met hard moments by taking care of each other. So let’s do that.
First — check your coverage status right now. If you or someone you love is on Medicaid, log into your state’s Medicaid portal or call your caseworker and confirm your current enrollment status and renewal date. Medicaid renewals became more complicated after pandemic-era continuous enrollment ended, and many people have lost coverage without realizing it simply because they missed a renewal notice. Do not assume you are covered. Verify it.
Second — find your nearest Federally Qualified Health Center. FQHCs operate on sliding-scale fees and serve patients regardless of insurance status. They are the safety net within the safety net — and they are still functioning. If your Medicaid coverage is disrupted, an FQHC can continue providing primary care, prenatal care, mental health services, and chronic disease management while you navigate getting coverage restored. Find one at findahealthcenter.hrsa.gov.
Third — do not delay the healthcare you need right now. If you have been putting off a mammogram, a cervical cancer screening, a prenatal visit, a blood pressure check, or a mental health appointment — make that appointment this week. Not next month. This week. Get the care you are entitled to while your coverage is intact, because the policy landscape is uncertain and your health cannot wait for the politics to settle.
Fourth — know who your state legislators are and make your voice heard. The Medicaid decisions that will affect your life most directly are being made at the state level. Louisiana’s Medicaid program, its expansion status, its work requirement policies — all of those are shaped by state lawmakers who answer to constituents. Call them. Write them. Show up to town halls. Our community’s political voice is most powerful at the level where healthcare policy is actually implemented.
Fifth — be your sister’s keeper. Find out if the women in your life know their coverage status. Help an elderly relative navigate her Medicaid renewal. Share this article with a pregnant friend. Host a conversation at your church or community organization about what these cuts mean and how to prepare. The power we have always had is in our relationships. Use it.
You Are Still Here. And That Is the Starting Point.
Black women in this country have survived policies designed to diminish our access, our health, and our futures — and we have survived them by being informed, by being resourceful, and by taking care of each other with a fierceness that no budget cut has ever been able to legislate away.
What is happening in Washington right now is serious. It will require us to fight politically, to advocate loudly, and to hold our elected officials accountable. But while we fight, we also live. We take care of ourselves. We make the appointments. We check on each other. We refuse to let the people in power determine how much we value our own health.
That has always been our answer. And it still is.
About the Author
Denise Tureaud is the Health & Wellness Contributor at Black Source Media, writing every Wednesday on the health of our community — body, mind, and spirit. She writes from inside the community she loves, for the women who carry it.
Sources
- HHS Office of Minority Health — Black/African American Women’s Health, 2025. minorityhealth.hhs.gov
- KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) — Medicaid’s Role for Black Americans, 2024. kff.org
- CDC — Maternal Mortality Rates in the United States, 2023. cdc.gov
- American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists — Uterine Fibroids in Black Women: Disparities in Diagnosis and Treatment, 2024. acog.org
- HRSA — Find a Health Center. findahealthcenter.hrsa.gov
- Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — Proposed Medicaid Cuts: What They Mean for Coverage, 2026. cbpp.org
Denise Tureaud
Health Writer • Wellness Advocate • New Orleans Community Voice • Wednesday Columnist
Denise Tureaud is Black Source Media’s Wednesday health and wellness columnist, writing for and about the Black women, men, and families of New Orleans with the directness and specificity that community deserves. She does not traffic in generic wellness advice. She writes about the real conditions — financial stress, insurance discrimination, systemic health disparities — that shape Black health outcomes in Louisiana and across America.
Her Wednesday series covers the intersection of personal health and systemic reality. She translates peer-reviewed research into actionable, plain-language guidance for readers who have been underserved by both the healthcare system and the health media that claims to speak for them. Her work on financial stress and cardiovascular disease brought new NIH-backed research directly to Black Source Media readers months before it reached mainstream health publications.
Tureaud writes with the voice of a New Orleans Black woman who has seen too many people she loves suffer from conditions that were preventable — and who believes that information, delivered honestly and directly, is one of the most powerful health interventions available.
Selected Articles by Denise Tureaud
Your Bills Are Breaking Your Heart. Literally.
Black Men Health Disparities: Why We Die Younger and What We Can Do About It (Strong Enough to Live Series)
View All Articles by Denise Tureaud at Black Source Media
Health & Wellness Columnist — Black Source Media
Denise Tureaud
Health Writer • Wellness Advocate • New Orleans Community Voice • Wednesday Columnist
Denise Tureaud is Black Source Media’s Wednesday health and wellness columnist, writing for and about the Black women, men, and families of New Orleans with the directness and specificity that community deserves. She does not traffic in generic wellness advice. She writes about the real conditions — financial stress, insurance discrimination, systemic health disparities — that shape Black health outcomes in Louisiana and across America.
Her Wednesday series covers the intersection of personal health and systemic reality. She translates peer-reviewed research into actionable, plain-language guidance for readers who have been underserved by both the healthcare system and the health media that claims to speak for them. Her work on financial stress and cardiovascular disease brought new NIH-backed research directly to Black Source Media readers months before it reached mainstream health publications.
Tureaud writes with the voice of a New Orleans Black woman who has seen too many people she loves suffer from conditions that were preventable — and who believes that information, delivered honestly and directly, is one of the most powerful health interventions available.
Selected Articles by Denise Tureaud
Your Bills Are Breaking Your Heart. Literally.
Black Men Health Disparities: Why We Die Younger and What We Can Do About It (Strong Enough to Live Series)
View All Articles by Denise Tureaud at Black Source Media