Donald Trump’s refusal to admit that coronavirus is a real and growing problem that needs to be tackled now, with every tool at the disposal of the government, is combining with the general Republican hatred of low-income people in a dangerous way. The Trump administration is refusing to allow states the flexibility to use Medicaid in responding to the crisis, the Los Angeles Times reports.
During disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the 2009 H1N1 outbreak, presidents have granted waivers to states so they could quickly enroll people in Medicaid or so medical providers could quickly treat people. The Trump administration is not doing that.
This failure to act comes against the backdrop of Trump having spent weeks downplaying the seriousness of the COVID-19 outbreak, which is now classified as a pandemic. His ongoing refusal to declare a national emergency also factors in to the way states’ hands are tied when it comes to leveraging Medicaid to improve their coronavirus response. But that’s not all. Seema Verma, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, wants to cut the number of people on Medicaid, so that pre-existing ideological disdain for the health of low-income people is likely playing a role in the refusal to empower states to fight the pandemic.
”Medicaid could be the nation’s biggest public health responder, but it’s such an object of ire in this administration,” George Washington University’s Sara Rosenbaum told the Los Angeles Times. “Their ideology is clouding their response to a crisis.”