Campaign Action
The latest rush among red states, aided the Trump administration, to take health care away from people is so absurdly counterproductive that it makes it clear that it’s all about punishing poor people—and nothing else. The new Trump-certified approach is to impose work requirements on non-elderly, non-disabled people enrolled in Medicaid. What it ignores is that a large percentage of those people are already working, and are going to lose their coverage because proving that they're working is going to be such a burden.
A new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that up to 4 million people nationally could lose their Medicaid coverage if the requirement was adopted by Congress, which the Republican House is proposing in their new budget. "Specifically, under all scenarios, most disenrollment would be among individuals who would remain eligible but lose coverage due to new administrative burdens or red tape versus those who would lose eligibility due to not meeting new work requirements."
Nearly two-thirds—62 percent—of non-elderly and non-disabled adults on Medicaid already work at least part-time; 43 percent work full time. But they have to prove it to the state to keep their coverage, a requirement that is likely to be so burdensome that people won't be able to comply. KFF uses the example of Arkansas, where "enrollees must set up online accounts and log into their accounts by the 5th of each month to attest to participating in work or other qualifying activities." Nearly one-quarter of Medicaid enrollees in Arkansas don't have internet access at all, even on a cell phone. That's just the beginning of barriers that states like Arkansas will be throwing up for people trying to keep coverage, and obstacles they will have to overcome.
On top of kicking already-working people out of coverage in the name of putting people to work (which is insane), states are going to have to spend a lot of new money in creating the reporting systems and hiring the people required to run them. Savings that these states see from dropping people out of the program will be eaten up by creating the system to do it.
There is nothing in any of this that makes sense from a policy perspective. It's not about creating dignity for poor people, getting them back to work, helping them lead meaningful lives—all that aspirational kind of bullshit people like Paul Ryan hide behind. This is about punishing poor people. It's about destroying the social safety net and rolling back the clock to the Gilded Age.