Reforming, not Cutting Medicaid:
"... Medicaid, the fast-growing entitlement that now spends more than $850 billion a year while delivering subpar healthcare for the poor. The left and the press are trying to intimidate the GOP from addressing the program’s failures, and President Trump is already having doubts.
WTF is wrong with him? But Republicans can win the Medicaid argument if they understand how the program has gone wrong, and make their case in the moral terms it deserves.
New research and polling on Medicaid work requirements help to clarify the stakes. More than six in 10 able-bodied adults on Medicaid report no earned income,
according to a report from the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), a think tank. Voters tend to think of Medicaid as a safety net for low-income pregnant women and disabled Americans. But Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act expanded the program into a permanent entitlement for childless men in prime working age.
Democrats claim those on Medicaid are working. You’ll hear statistics like this one from the Kaiser Family Foundation: 92% of able-bodied Medicaid adults under age 65 worked full or part-time, or were indisposed for a good reason such as caring for a relative or attending school. But
that figure is derived from government survey data, (I.e., total bs.) which are self-reported and rely on sample sizes as small as a few dozen.
FGA, by contrast, obtained administrative records from state Medicaid agencies in 23 states, a far more complete picture of earnings for nearly 21 million able-bodied adults on Medicaid. It
found that millions are declining to work at all,
!!!!! which is damaging to the country economically and culturally."
"Medicaid ..... should be a temporary last resort, and the GOP aim should be to move as many people as possible off the Medicaid rolls and onto employer options.
"Some Republicans fear work requirements would alienate male MAGA voters, but that whiffs the politics.
Some 62% of voters supported Medicaid work requirements in a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll. That included 47% of Democrats, 60% of independents, and 82% of Republicans."
"Work as a condition for benefits is an American economic and cultural norm. If more healthy men get back into the workforce, and ultimately off Medicaid, the program will be able to focus on the poor for whom it was originally intended."
www.nytimes.com
