More Kentuckians are expressing concerns over Medicaid cuts.

A WQ professor whose young adult son has autism spoke at a news conference yesterday hosted by the Kentucky Democrats.

Our Laura Rogers has more on this from Bowling Green.

We should be expanding benefits, not talking about cutting them.

Dr. Robert Dietl is a college history professor and the father of an autistic son.

There are 326,000 Kentuckians with disabilities who get some sort of help from Medicaid.

His son, Samuel, now 24, is one of those people.

He has made progress and he's been very dependent upon services provided through what's called the Michel P waiver in Kentucky.

The Michel waiver provides home and community based services like therapy and adult day programs for the disabled.

These are important support to allow him to live a life of dignity.

That includes home visits from a direct support professional.

This is a young man who comes in and spends part of each day with Sammy working with him.

This allows me to continue to work and Samuel to continue to progress.

He is now more verbal, more socially interactive because of that one on one contact on a daily basis.

But Dial is concerned those services are now in jeopardy due to President Trump's cuts to Medicaid that congressional Republicans passed in early July.

These services are enough for us to get by.

No one's getting rich.

No one's having a luxurious life because of these benefits.

You're just putting things together so that you can have a life of basic dignity.

Dial spoke in Bowling Green on Thursday as a guest of the Kentucky Democratic Party, touring the state to blast Medicaid cuts backed by the GOP led House and Senate.

And the greatest fear that my wife and I have is what happens to him after we're gone.

The man who first wrote those terrible cuts into that day ugly bill represents Bowling Green.

They specifically called out Kentucky's second congressional congressman, Brett Guthrie, who represents the Bowling Green Area chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

In a July op ed in the Courier Journal.

Guthrie says the legislation expands access to home and community based services for the disabled.

Calling the one big, beautiful Bill a commonsense win that strengthens Medicaid for Kentucky's most vulnerable.

But Dietl isn't convinced.

With concerns for his son's future.

The goal is or the hope is that federal benefits and state benefits like Medicaid will help support and provide a framework for a life throughout it.

I mean, he's going to live, what, 30, probably 30 or 40 years longer than I do.

But if those benefits aren't there, what's going to happen to him?

Right.

This is a long game we're talking about.

More Kentucky edition.

I'm Laura Rogers.

Thank you, Laura.

The legislation cuts nearly $1,000,000,000,000 from Medicaid over the next decade.

It includes new work reporting requiring months and other restrictions.

The Warren County Democratic Party says more than 45,000 people in their county rely on Medicaid for health care coverage.