When politicians frame disability rights as “extras,” they erase the people who sit beside us in pews, pack lunches at our tables and clock in across Minnesota every day. Disabled people are not a special interest group. Cutting the policies that make independent living possible is exclusion by design.

Minnesota’s Medicaid programs (Medical Assistance and MinnesotaCare) provide health coverage to roughly one in four residents and spend most funds on people with disabilities or older adults, covering about half of long‑term care costs.

Our state also depends on home‑ and community‑based services (HCBS) waivers — such as CADI and the DD waiver — to keep people integrated at home and at work. Destabilizing federal Medicaid support or adding red tape doesn’t trim “waste” — it cuts the hours,

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