Stephen Miller’s dream for public education:
Teacher: If you’re poor, and sick, and unemployed, you need to go find a job before you can get health care, because it’s immoral to give lazy slackers free stuff.
Student: Um, teacher? What if you’re poor because you’re unemployed? You had a job and lost it?
Or what if you’re unemployed because you’re too sick to work?
Teacher: Guards, take that student away to be beaten. Obviously a communist.
Despite Republicans’ claims, work requirements would actually increase spending on operations while cutting people’s benefits.
“Republicans love to talk about ‘waste, fraud, and abuse,’ but these red tape requirements on Medicaid are leading to massive amounts of money being spent on wasteful administrative costs rather than health care,”
The point is it is not about saving money but being assholes. Or as others have said, “cruelty and not saving money is the point”.
That is while they will claim this is saving money to give them cover, it is about depriving government assistance to “those people”. And who will be hired at a cost greater than giving assistance to “those people”?
On top of that, Orris told TPM: “What we saw in Arkansas was how exemptions on paper don’t actually protect people. More people lost coverage than had been projected because exemptions were not as foolproof.”
The number of enrollees Arkansas deemed non-compliant was much higher than the number of enrollees who did not qualify for an exemption or were not engaged in the implemented work requirements. Many lost coverage not because they were non compliant but simply due to red tape. Many faced challenges in fulfilling the state’s paperwork requirements and reporting the necessary information, experts told TPM.
Or to put another way, getting a waiver, or really a state or Government official GRANITNG a waiver is SUBJECTIVE/DISCRETIONARY.
To drive this home, as it happens, I am receiving several unilateral amendments to Federal Government contracts for review from my clients. The purpose of these is to remove any and all protections for women, minorities and the environment.
My favorite is the removal from all federal contracts Federal Acquisition Clause (FAR) 52.222-21, Prohibition of Segregated Facilities. This means the Federal Government is back to allowing, I think “encouraging” is a better word for it, companies to have separate bathrooms for Blacks and Whites.
If you doubt this, I suggest you read the Alabama State Constitution which mandates “Separate but Equal” not only schools but “facilities”.
It is my opinion that this is how and why Trump and Republicans have been elected. That is Trump’s base is happy to turn over wealth to Trump, and his cronies, putting themselves back 130 years, in exchange for putting women and minorities back 70 years.
People will avoid preventive care since they don’t have insurance, which will lead to more instances of emergency care. (Think of diabetics who are supposed to see a doctor for testing 2x/year and stay on insulin. If they don’t do so, the outcomes are dire.) Hospitals will eat the cost for emergency care which will put even more stress on them to stay afloat, particularly in rural areas. So what was a manageable cost (eg preventive care) now balloons into a much bigger expense. But Congress doesn’t care. They aren’t paying the bill.
Doesn’t medicaid already have work requirements for those who a capable of working. There are lots and lots of people in nursng homes who are receiving medicaid who can’t work under any circumstance. Also medicaid is critical for rural hospitals where hard working farmers are taken after the tractor runs over their legs or they have a heart attack. Anyway the kind of harsh work requirements the Republicans seem to be talking about cost a lot more to police than they save.
Traditionally medicaid work requirements have been used to fool the gulible into thinking they are going to save real money. it never works. Work requirements are great for candidates telling their constituents they have done something but they really haven’t done a damn thing.
We are probably better off with Medicare for all and raising the minimum wage.
I want them to punch in on a time clock. Each and every day.
They even managed to convince Clinton democrats it was a good idea, or at least a sell-able one, and so biblical in tone too; nothing like cheap moralizing to set an legislative agenda.
But here’s the thing, work requirements do not work as advertised for social programs: healthy, unhealthy, young or old, the evidence was in decades ago; e.g., Earning It: Why work requirements don’t work.
tl/dr: Three factors explain the feeble effect that work requirements for safety net programs have on employment and incomes
Not that something like empirical evidence matters to the moralizing, revanchist clowns posing as fiscal conservatives but there it is. And btw, Josh Hawley really needs somebody to just slap the pluperfect doggy doo out of him; don’t care if it does him any good or not, just say’n.
Most of this isn’t about the definitional requirements, it’s about the effing paperwork. Every month (and, as reported, even in advance) people have to file forms proving that somethingorother. So that means going to an office somewhere with your pay stubs or your certification from an approved organization (!) that you volunteered there. Where is the office? When is it open? Or doing the same thing online, with a site that kicks you back to the beginning if your connection drops (assuming you have a computer or a phone and can get all your paperwork into approved digital form). So even if the requirements were vaguely reasonable, a person who is near the bottom end of the income scale is going to have problems completing the forms to prove it on deadline every. single. month. And if they’re disabled or just out sick and qualify for an exemption, they’re going to have even more trouble getting those forms done on deadline.
(Also, if the crap about wanting people to better themselves, any educational enrollment would also qualify you automatically…)
And write a weekly report on 5 work-related things they did last week; the official, not their staffmembers.