Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) visits with Corinne Kunkel, left, and her son Dylan, 5, after a meeting about health care. (Antonio Olivo/The Washington Post)

With the Republican health-care bill facing an uncertain fate, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) on Monday addressed the potential effects of the legislation on children with complex medical conditions who rely on Medicaid — an effort to shame GOP members of Congress into compromise.

“It’s important that we share stories about what Medicaid really does,” Kaine said before convening a roundtable discussion with parents of children with disabilities and health-care providers on Northern Virginia Community College’s Medical Education campus. “For many, Medicaid is about enabling them to live more independently, enabling them to be more successful in school.”

Emphasizing the value of Medicaid — and criticizing the Republican alternative — could also help boost Democratic prospects in upcoming statewide elections.

The event was one in a string of appearances by Democrats across the country in recent weeks as they seek to rally opposition to Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with legislation that, among other things, would phase out extra funds provided by the federal government as an incentive to expand eligibility for Medicaid.

The Republican Better Care Reconciliation Act would also wipe out the system of open-

ended entitlements under Medicaid by putting the program on a budget.

In Virginia, Kaine has campaigned against the bill through public meetings that underscored the potential effects on seniors, children in public schools, foster children and others among an estimated 1 million Virginians who rely on Medicaid.

His office said that more than 11,000 people have called during the past three weeks to urge the 2016 vice-presidential candidate to fight harder to defeat the Republican health-care plan.

More broadly, a recent Quinnipiac University poll pegged President Trump’s approval rating in Virginia at 40 percent and found that nearly 6 in 10 Virginians disapproved of the House Republicans’ health-care bill.

That may reflect a larger backlash against Republicans in the state that could help Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (D) beat Republican Ed Gillespie in November’s gubernatorial election, political analysts said.

Gillespie, aware of the moderate views in his state, has avoided taking a firm stance on the health-care plan, arguing that he is focused on state policies as a gubernatorial candidate and would “match state policies to whatever the federal policy is.”

Quentin Kidd, director of Christopher Newport University’s Wason Center for Public Policy, said Northam and his supporters will nonetheless try to link Gillespie to the health-care plan as much as possible.

“They want voters to think about this issue in the context of a national referendum on Trump and Republicans,” Kidd said. “If that offensive could take hold at the gubernatorial level, it would be natural that it would also roll down to the state house levels.”

In addition to governor, lieutenant governor and state attorney general, all 100 House of Delegates seats are up for grabs in November.

At Monday’s roundtable, the parents and pediatricians there said they were more concerned about how the health-care bill would affect their ability to provide care to children dealing with an array of health problems.

Though Republican senators returned from their holiday break seeming deeply divided over several aspects of the legislation, the roundtable participants said they aren’t convinced that the bill is doomed.

“It should be dead, but I don’t think we can say that it is,” Kaine warned.

To the participants in the roundtable discussion, that means tens of thousands of dollars per year in Medicaid support is still on the line.

Several said the federal subsidy has helped pay for feeding tubes, wheelchairs, surgeries and in-home nurses — aid for people with disabilities that is already in short supply in Virginia, with more than 11,000 people on a state waiting list for Medicaid vouchers.

“These costs are going to be so high,” said Corinne Kunkel, whose son Dylan, 5, was born with a condition known as spinal muscular atrophy with respiratory distress and receives a Medicaid waiver to help pay for a ventilator.

“It’s not like we’re asking for handouts,” added Jennifer Reese, whose daughter Cailyn, 9, was born with a genetic seizure disorder. Reese receives help from Medicaid for the girl’s care, including diapers that run $350 per box.

“This is all stuff we need,” said Reese, a director at the ENDependence Center of Northern Virginia, an advocacy group for people with disabilities. “If we didn’t have Medicaid we definitely wouldn’t still own our house and I probably wouldn’t have been able to keep working.”

Dr. Samuel Bartle, an assistant professor at the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU, predicted that more families without insurance will turn to emergency rooms as a primary source of care.

“I’ve seen them come in at 2 a.m., where they come in and say: ‘I can’t get an appointment because no one will take me,’ ” he said. “We end up having to hospitalize them just to provide a certain service.

“Having Medicaid cut is going to put a bigger strain.”

Nodding his head, Kaine said those dark scenarios have mostly been absent from discussion on Capitol Hill because the Republican leadership in the Senate crafted the legislation largely behind closed doors.

“We’ve had no hearings,” said Kaine, who sits on the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “We’re ready to talk and to try to find the improvements, but we’re being given no opportunity to.”

Over time, that will prove to be politically damaging for Republicans at both the national level and in Virginia, he predicted.

“When you have a guy running for governor like Ralph Northam, who has spent his life as a pediatrician, you’re going to hear an awful lot about health care in this governor’s race,” he said. “And that is on people’s minds.”