Daina Stock has rheumatoid arthritis in every joint in her body. Her son has Asperger’s syndrome, a condition on the autism spectrum, she said. And her husband has acute intermittent porphyria, a rare metabolic disorder that sometimes keeps him in the hospital for days at a time, Stock added.

Due to these complex and ongoing health needs, Stock, 41, said her family’s medical expenses amounted to about $18,000 out of pocket last year.

Stock — who lives in Manlius — is just one of the nearly 500,000 New York state residents who benefit from the medical expenses tax deduction each year, said Joe Stelling, associate state director of AARP New York, an organization that advocates for older adults. This deduction allows people to write-off medical expenses that exceed 10 percent of their annual income on their tax returns.

But the tax bill that passed the Republican-controlled United States House of Representatives on Nov. 16 would eliminate this deduction.

“I was nauseous,” Stock said of her reaction when she heard about the House tax bill. “I think anybody in that situation would be.”

Many activists say removing the medical expenses deduction would hurt middle- and low-income older adults and people such as Stock and her family who have chronic health needs.

“I’ve been getting a lot of calls from our members who are really concerned about (the tax bill) and the medical expense deduction is something that they automatically know is going to hit our membership in a big way,” Stelling said.

Of the 8.8 million Americans who used the medical expenses deduction in 2015, 49 percent had incomes of less than $50,000 per year, according to AARP.

People who use the medical expenses deduction tend to have lower incomes than those who claim other common deductions. Only 19 percent of people who used the charitable contributions deduction and 17 percent who claimed the mortgage home interest deduction had incomes less than $50,000 annually. The House bill plans to preserve both of those deductions.

Low-income older adults and other marginalized populations have the most to lose if the deduction is cut from the tax code, said Jennifer Goldberg, directing attorney at Justice in Aging — an organization that fights senior poverty.

“People of color, women, LGBT older adults, all are disproportionately affected … by something like the elimination of the medical expenses tax deduction,” Goldberg said. “They have lower incomes … and people with lower incomes are more likely to need this medical expense deduction.”

Proponents of the bill point out that the medical expenses deduction is only used by about 6 percent of people who file their taxes each year. A spokeswoman for the House Ways and Means committee told The New York Times that increasing the standard deduction — as the bill proposes — would save most U.S. residents enough money to make up for the loss of the medical expenses deduction and other specific deductions.

That argument doesn’t reassure Goldberg, who worries that the GOP tax bill might increase the federal deficit, which could hurt vulnerable populations in the long term, she said.

“There’s going to be an enormous amount of pressure to cut spending,” Goldberg said. “And those programs (that would likely be cut) — Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security — are exactly the government programs that people with chronic health needs rely on, (that) older adults rely on.”

Stelling said he has been encouraging concerned members of AARP New York to email and call their representatives and senators to tell them how they feel about the bill, and to stand up and oppose the legislation.

The Senate’s version of the tax bill, which would leave the medical expenses deduction intact, could be up for a vote this week, and The New York Times has reported the White House is pressuring Congress to finalize the tax bill by Christmas.

For her part, Stock said if she had the opportunity to speak with members of Congress who support the bill, she would tell them her family’s story.

“My husband, myself and my son — we all have these … conditions that at first glance, you don’t see,” Stock said. “At first glance, we look like your typical, all-American family … I think (the stories) get lost. I think that people get buried in the political views.”

Published on November 28, 2017 at 9:52 pm

Contact Madeleine: mdavison@syr.edu