GOP war on Medicaid

Robert B. Hubbell - The rap on Democrats is that they are lousy at messaging. They take simple issues and convert them into complicated policies that are difficult to explain, repeat, or remember.

So, let me try to help.

On Monday, Republicans released a spending bill that would:

Cut $715 billion from Medicaid.
Take away health coverage from 8 million Americans.
To pay for billionaire tax cuts that will cost $5 trillion.

 MSNBC -   In the latest front of their war on the poor, Republicans in Congress are trotting out what could be one of their biggest health policy failures ever: Medicaid work requirements.

Republicans frame these mandates as a way to encourage people to work. But work requirements fail to increase employment, while only succeeding at tossing millions of people off Medicaid. And that’s exactly what Republicans in Congress are banking on.

Work requirements — or paperwork requirements, more accurately — are little more than a bureaucratic cudgel. They impose layers of complex red tape on Medicaid enrollees, forcing them to clear administrative hurdles and prove their employment status or that they qualify for an exemption (such as caregiving or attending school). The primary result is health care coverage being taken away from eligible Americans.

What happens when people lose their coverage? They forego care, fall into crippling debt, and may even die.

We know this because nearly everyone on Medicaid who can work already is. We also know this because states like Georgia and Arkansas have experimented with work requirements to disastrous results. In the latter state, for example, some 18,000 Arkansans lost coverage, even though researchers found “nearly everyone targeted by the policy already met the requirements.