SAVOY – Opal Anderson Turner’s living room is warm, with a brown, leather couch and a wooden cabinet lined with glass and porcelain sculptures.

The 81-year-old lives in an apartment building in Savoy among other seniors aging independently from nursing homes. She loves the two home care aides who visit her daily to help her dress, do chores she cannot like mopping, and take her to the doctor and to church.

“I couldn’t survive in a nursing home,” Anderson Turner said. “It’s better for me to be here because I’m a person that likes to move and do different things – like I fixed oatmeal yesterday morning.”

Most Americans would like to do what Anderson Turner is doing, living in her own home for as long as possible. Family members and paid caregivers make that happen for those whose chronic illnesses or frailty make it hard to carry out tasks like showering or taking out the garbage independently.

Anderson Turner has relied on her children before, but they have their own lives and stressful jobs, she said, and it was hard to stay confined to a room to wait for their care.

Professional long-term care through the company Help at Home works perfectly for her, she said. But care like this may soon become less available to many people.

Medicaid covers long-term care both in and out of institutions for many elderly and disabled people. According to the nonpartisan health policy group KFF, the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people paid for 61% of all spending on long-term care. Most of that care took place at home.

President Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is estimated to reduce federal spending on Medicaid by $911 billion dollars over 10 years. KFF projects that states may spend less on home care as a result of those cuts.

Jenny Smith is one of the two home care aides who visit Anderson Turner. Anderson Turner does not qualify for Medicaid, but Smith worries about how much Medicaid cuts will affect home care aides more broadly.

“I expect client hours to be decreased,” Smith said.

And home care workers don’t make much, so sometimes they rely on the program too, for their own health coverage, she said.

SEIU Healthcare made the issue the center of a Walk-a-Day event on Thursday. The union brought Illinois Democratic Congresswoman Nikki Budzinski to Anderson Turner’s home and had her do a task of Anderson Turner’s choosing with Smith.

Budzinski said her goals align with the union’s.

“One of the things that I want to be leading on immediately in this next year in Congress is reversing those cuts,” Budzinski said.

The Illinois Congresswoman said she expects Medicaid cuts to have a signficant impact on elder care in the state. She said she has heard of six nursing homes in her district that may close because of the cuts.

Budzinski is running in November against Champaign Republican Jeff Wilson.

Reached by phone on Thursday, Wilson said he supports the changes to Medicaid by President Trump and Congressional Republicans and thinks the tax cuts in the bill will be significant for seniors. He said he plans to wait to see how much the changes will affect Illinois seniors.

“I also want to take a common sense approach, knowing that sometimes projections can be way out of whack,” Wilson said.

The changes to Medicaid begin to take effect in January.