Discussion: 5 Points On The Trump Admin's Crusade For Medicaid Work Requirements

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I fully expect that I will see some kind of “single payer” scheme in my lifetime in this country. The sooner we wrest control from the Republican Party, the better.

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Goddamn they are going to fuck some folks over. I really hope this wakes folks up and they start voting against these shitheads.

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Pigs putting lipstick on a pig. It’s like the freaking muppet show.

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Well, if I can’t stop it or do anything about it, I will at least get some satisfaction from point three:

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Trump supporters will be among those hardest hit

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“Under the new policy, states can require able-bodied adults to either work, volunteer, attend job training or prove they’re actively searching for a job to qualify for Medicaid.”

Are they requiring corporations to prove they’re not offshoring any of those elusive jobs to qualify for tax cuts?

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Medicaid is a barrier to people who want to work, and who want to get married, whenever one partner’s income is too high to qualify, but they don’t have good enough health insurance to cover the kids. It also forces people to carefully titrate their hours, making sure they don’t earn themselves out of insurance. If the employer wants them to work more than that, tough.

One couple I know, he works at a car dealer and she tends bar part time. Another couple, he is a veteran who earned his coverage from the VA. Their insurances cover the men only, not the families. So the one guy’s wife and the other’s fiancee have to work just enough part time, tending bar and clerking in stores, to make ends meet. But not not too much, without going over the income limits. The fiancee can’t get married until the kids are on their own, because her kids would lose coverage altogether. The other wife has to carefully titrate her hours to make sure their combined incomes don’t go over.

Surprise surprise, the judgemental GOP stereotype is about the opposite of the truth.

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Agreed, because it is never going to happen while the Misanthropic Party is in control. They really hate people. Donors, big corporations - let the money rain down - but for poor people and average people - it’s the ‘let em die young’/Ryan approach.

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God, I hate these people. I do not understand the need to be so mean. When I get into a discussion with a righty about this “tough love” attitude, their focus is always on those who cheat, those who don’t “deserve” the free offerings we are handing out. They cannot fathom the “socialist” idea that it is better to let a few cheats into the program than to block those who might be eligible for the program, but cannot get in because restrictions are too tight. That is the difference between the American and the European model of welfare. Americans can’t abide the thought of someone benefiting who might be a cheat, while Europeans (at least the socialist ones) can’t abide the thought that someone might go without, might not get services they need.

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The repubs seem to be doing everything they can to usher in a democratic majority and single payer healthcare.

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Phony posturing and pandering. Lets cut to the chase: congresspeople have very cush jobs. Months of time off each year, free first class travel, dynamite healthcare, housing allowance…( big one ) and starting pay of 15K a MONTH. They don’t get holidays off. They get the 2 weeks around those holidays off. Most spend 60 % of their time fundraising…for themselves. And they are the folks imposing a phony work ethic bill on the underprivileged to save bucks. And those bucks come out of the same pot the Medicaid comes from. Tax Money.

This isn’t policy. It’s cruelty. They do it because it appeals to the folks they depend on to get another 2 years of that good life. Folks that get their rocks off knowing people are being deported, or imprisoned, or left out in the cold.

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Nah.

I think they know–at least on an instinctive level–what they’re doing here. The rural base loses health coverage? The GOP assures them that it’s the fault of Those People. If only Those People would stop Those Peopling, well, everything would just be grits and gravy!

You see how this will work? You lose your Medicaid because of the work requirement, well, the only reason this requirement exists is because Those People are so lazy: you are being punished for the sins of others! You are a victim! And not like those “victims” on the left! No! You are a full-on victimy victim, because you are a pure soul, full of God’s love and the Hateful Left, which coddles and encourages Those People, wants to destroy you because of your Christian beliefs!

The result? The base gets frothing angry (-ier?) at the Democratic Party and the long, long list of Fellow Travelers who allowed this state of affairs to exist in the first place. Kentuckians, for example, will turn out in fucking droves to elect some batshit crazy Republicans in 2018.

It’s about the color line. IT IS ALWAYS ABOUT THE COLOR LINE.

If the GOP had a real spine, it would just deprive blacks of any kind of government aid, including Social Security and stop pussyfooting around the issue. I think you would find that these programs would suddenly skyrocket in popularity in Trump Country.and the Republicans would actually face consequences for doing anything other than protecting them.

So…yeah. Trumpers belong to a cult of personality now. They are True Believers. They love Trump only slightly less than they claim to love God and the Baby Jesus; well, let’s not mince words, they see him as God’s representative on Earth: the Evangelicals have a Pope now! So, he cannot be errant. What Trump says is true, factually and emotionally. His supporters cannot be argued out of this belief anymore than you can convince them that there is no God.

The more the GOP assaults the programs that benefit them, the more the base will cling to them.

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No need to be concerned about the economic impact in these states which are already poorer than most. It will just take a chunk out of the economy from a group that usually spend every dollar they get.

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See the Jan 10 Q poll. Highlights are Trump favorability at 36% unfavorability at 59%. Also when asked who was responsible for the good economy 40% said Trump but 49% said Obama. The base is far to small to save the repubs and everyone else has caught on to the con.

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I can already hear the mobility scooters in MS revving up to blame this on the Democrats.

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You can always find a willing poor person or a willing minority - in this case the Indian American woman Seema Varma - to do for you the dirty deed of hurting the minority and the poor.

And of course this will end up costing way more in even the medium term, because how long does it take for people who can’t navigate the work requirement to get sick enough that they’re in the ER and the social worker there enrolls them in medicaid because they’re obviously now permanently too sick to keep a job.

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Even the Heritage Foundation is against this dumb idea.

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Depends upon the meaning of “able-bodied”. The “guidelines” are sure to be stretched beyond the limits by heartless GOP governors.

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This is more genocide on the installment plan. I know a woman on Medicaid with lupus. She can’t work. That’s how she got on Medicaid.

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