On the most. The GOP management retains trumpeting work necessities and fraud when requested the place they’ll discover $880 billion in cuts to well being care packages. That’s nonsense in response to Merrill Goozner.
The fraudulent work requirement meme, GoozNews
I used to be glad to see fellow substacker Paul Krugman weigh on this morning on how the Republican Social gathering is attacking their very own constituents when it proposes huge cuts to Medicaid. Absolutely 20 out of the highest 24 states most depending on federal help to run their Medicaid packages voted for Donald Trump in 2024.
Reporters in states that can be harm most by these cuts want to begin highlighting how a lot is at stake of their areas, which they’ll quantify on the state degree by referencing my publish from final week. It exhibits each state’s federal match and share of this system from 2023. If the $880 billion in proposed cuts to well being care packages have been evenly utilized, each state would have its federal match decreased by 6.75% this 12 months rising to 25% by 2034, in response to the Home Price range Committee decision that handed earlier this week.
When requested for his or her alternate options to huge cuts in Medicaid to assist offset the price of extra tax breaks for firms and the wealthy, the Home management continues to prattle on about cracking down on fraud and imposing work necessities. As I identified final week, eliminating each dime of fraud within the Medicaid program would save at most $50 billion, in response to the Authorities Accountability Workplace. And that one-time financial savings has been decreased to a pipedream given the Trump administration’s evisceration of the Justice Division and his firing the HHS inspector normal.
As for work necessities, “they’re basically a fraud,” Krugman wrote.
“There are almost no Americans choosing not to work because they can live on government benefits instead; our social safety net isn’t generous enough for that. The real purpose of work requirements is to create more hoops for people to jump through, to make it harder to collect the benefits they’re legally owed.”
Who’s on Medicaid?
The concept that there are a bunch of malingerers on the market feasting off authorities packages is bogus. In keeping with the Congressional Price range Workplace, one-third of the $607 billion in federal matching cash despatched to the states in 2024 went to pay for nursing residence and residential take care of the destitute aged and completely disabled; support to hospitals that serve a disproportionate share of the poor; and administrative prices. These non-working teams, greater than half of all beneficiaries, additionally account for the most important share of the spending on the medical health insurance facet of this system.
If we glance solely on the 26.1 million-plus able-bodied adulted below 65 who have been on Medicaid in 2023, almost two-thirds have been already working both full or part-time. A lot of the relaxation have been both caregivers, disabled, sick or at school. Simply 8% or about 2 million individuals weren’t working.
If Congress succeeded in pushing each certainly one of them off the roles, it will save at most $14 billion a 12 months, and that features the states’ contribution to their care. You don’t should be a math wizard to know that’s not going to place a lot of a dent in a $2 trillion tax reduce.
Now examine these financial savings to slicing the federal match for the 41 states and District of Columbia that expanded Medicaid to cowl the working poor incomes as much as 138% of the poverty line. That choice, contained in a CBO report, would reduce state support by almost $600 billion over the subsequent decade, beginning with $44 billion in 2026. That, after all, would require a change within the regulation, and the votes of Congresspersons and Senators whose constituents who could be harm probably the most.
I’ve a learn rather a lot not too long ago about Christian nationalism and its affect over the Trump administration and lots of newly elected GOP members of Congress. One has to marvel the place demonization of the poor and cruelty towards low-wage employees suits into their theology.
