AKRON, Ohio -- Akron Children's Hospital CEO Bill Considine is proselytizing about the effect of the American Health Care Act on children.

Considine, who as president for 38 years is the longest serving chief of a children's hospital in Ohio, is meeting with Ohio's U.S. senators and congress members. He tells them how the act's $880 billion in Medicaid cuts would devastate kids, who make up half of Ohio's Medicaid population.

"Kids don't vote so you don't hear from them," Considine said in a meeting with cleveland.com reporters and editors.

About 54 percent of Children's patients are on Medicaid. The American Health Care Act, currently under consideration in the Senate, would slash both benefits and enrollment.

Medicaid currently doesn't cover the full cost of treatment for its patients, Considine said. Cutting it would further decrease revenues for children's hospitals and hurt their bottom lines, so they would be less able to provide care to all children, regardless of heir insurance.

Why the cuts?

"It's because they need $840 billion out of the budget to give a tax cut to people like me," Considine said. "And I don't want it."

With two campuses, a primary care network of 28 offices, satellite emergency rooms and urgent care centers, and partnerships with pediatric units in hospitals across the region, Akron Children's is the biggest stand-alone children's hospital in Ohio. It covers a huge swath of Ohio, 90 communities in 27 counties.

In 2016, Children's counted more than 1 million visits in outpatient care.

Last year on the Akron campus, Children's opened the Celeste Myers Dental Clinic, which has been so busy a second dentist was recently added, Considine said.

Children's also serves Northeast Ohio's Amish population, which doesn't participate in health insurance.

And it's dealing with an influx of babies in its neonatal units, where the number of babies born addicted to drugs has jumped at least 15 percent. That addiction is considered a preexisting condition which may not have to be covered by insurance under the American Health Care Act, Considine says.

"The greatest pressure for families today is the ability to pay," Considine said. "But [at Akron Children's] the kids are treated first."

Yet the national debate on the future of health care has not delved into its effect on kids, says Considine and executive Vice President Shawn Lyden. Considine is going to continue to push.

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