by
Leeann Hall
On
January 11, the Trump administration issued a cruel announcement: If
you can’t find a job, don’t count on being able to get health
care.
Under an
unprecedented new policy, the administration will let states kick
people off Medicaid for the crime of being unemployed. Instead of
providing good jobs to struggling people, the administration is
offering threats and tougher times.
Those
hurt could include the Carrier plant workers from Indiana, whose jobs
Trump promised to save when he was campaigning for the presidency.
Last year, the company announced 600 layoffs.
Now the
last of these employees are being pushed out the door. One worker
says she’s “a lost paycheck away from homeless.”
Imagine
telling her Medicaid won’t be there for her on top of everything
else she’ll lose. The heartlessness is incomprehensible.
Still,
her state’s governor is one of ten that’s jumping on the
administration’s new proposal to require work or work-related
activities. Kentucky’s plan has already been approved.
This is
no way to treat people you claim to care about — especially when
lawmakers can improve our lives with policies providing child care,
paid family and medical leave, and living-wage jobs in a clean-energy
economy, to say nothing of affordable health care for all.
Simple
facts show that this work requirement isn’t about jobs. Most
working-age adults who use Medicaid already work, and many of them
have jobs thanks to Medicaid — not despite it.
That’s
because Medicaid helps them get and stay healthy enough to work.
After Ohio expanded Medicaid, three quarters of those who signed up
said getting coverage helped them get work. In Michigan, more than
two-thirds also said it helped better at a job they already had.
This
policy is another blow for those facing racial or other
discrimination on the job. It punishes people in job-scarce
communities. It hurts people struggling to find work when they have a
past criminal conviction.
And,
while the administration says people with disabilities won’t be
affected, that could be by only by the strictest definition of
disability. Those who’ve been hurt on the job won’t necessarily
be protected. Neither may many people struggling with addiction,
mental health concerns, or physical conditions that make working
difficult or impossible.
We can
see from Kentucky’s plan what this could look like. New premiums
for struggling families. Paperwork lockouts. A financial or health
“literacy test” reminiscent of tests that barred African American
people from voting. State officials say 90,000-95,000 people will
lose their coverage.
Last
year, Americans demanded we not go backwards on health care.
Thousands of us showed up at town halls to block the GOP effort to
repeal the Affordable Care Act and the gutting of Medicaid.
Everyone
should get the care they need.
The
expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act was a step in
that direction. It gave many of us hope for the country we can be:
one where a family’s fortunes don’t depend on the good graces of
a giant corporation, and our lives don’t depend on the size of our
wallet.
We still
have a long way to go. Many are shut out of health care because of
citizenship status, because coverage is still too expensive, or
because our states refuse to expand Medicaid.
But the
Trump administration and GOP Congress are moving us backward. This
new Medicaid scheme is just part of it. There’s also the recent tax
bill that will raise insurance premiums while giving huge cuts to
corporations like Carrier — which, according to one employee facing
layoffs, is “getting money hand over fist.”
Americans
want health care expanded, not taken away. They can’t trick us with
yet another scheme. Let’s raise our voices again and protect
Medicaid.
Source,
links:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/01/23/trumps-gift-for-the-unemployed-kicking-them-off-health-care/
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