New York Times, January 11, 2018: The Trump plan to hurt the poor by pretending to help them
The Trump administration said Thursday that it would get poor people to work by letting state governments deny them Medicaid if they don’t have a job.
The new policy would be attempting to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. About two-thirds of Medicaid beneficiaries are either seniors, disabled people or children. Of the remaining one-third, nearly 80 percent are in families with at least one working person and 60 percent have full- or part-time jobs, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. This policy change is merely a bureaucratic obstacle to keep poor people from obtaining Medicaid. Eligibility for the program varies from state to state, but the national median income limit for a single person to qualify for Medicaid is $16,642 a year.
Maybe Americans shouldn’t be surprised that this administration wants to take health care away from the poor, given that it has spent so much time trying to wreck the A.C.A. But they should be angry.
