This is a great, if profoundly grim, layout of the raw numbers. What’s maybe even grimmer, though, is the logic underneath it. Take the “work requirements” for Medicaid. The article rightly points out that these rules mostly function as administrative tripwires, knocking people off the rolls for paperwork issues, not for a lack of work.
There's a uniquely American type of institutional cruelty here, where we design a “safety net” that seems engineered to fail the very people it's supposed to catch. It’s less a net and more of an elaborate, high-stakes administrative obstacle course.
The rhetoric is all about self-sufficiency and responsibility, but the reality is a system of bureaucratic attrition. We seem to have this deep, national ambivalence about public good. we feel obligated to provide it, but also compelled to make accessing it a test of endurance, a trial by paperwork. It’s as if the real goal isn’t to ensure care, but to ensure that only the most administratively nimble and fortunate among the vulnerable can successfully claim it. The suffering this causes is real, even if the policy language renders it abstract.
How many freeloaders are there? Any figures for that? Demonizing the poor is as American as apple pie. Many of those needing Medicaid are working, many more than one job. Oh, but, strangely we don’t hear much about that. It’s so much easier to make it all about character & not circumstances. Meanwhile, do those like you ever question taxpayer underwriting of corporations such as Walmart which doesn’t pay enough for lower level workers to live on, hence they need government assistance. So in essence, we subsidize one of the world’s largest, most profitable corporations. A behemoth that could well afford a little less profit by offering somewhat higher wages to tens of thousands of its employees. Military spending will now reach one trillion. But, of course, all of that politically motivated spending is “necessary.” And don’t we still subsidize big oil?
Trump, Heritage, the Heritage funded/chisen SC majority, the GOP are intent on making the US a dictatorial oligarchy & it seems millions of voters are happy to oblige.
This is a great, if profoundly grim, layout of the raw numbers. What’s maybe even grimmer, though, is the logic underneath it. Take the “work requirements” for Medicaid. The article rightly points out that these rules mostly function as administrative tripwires, knocking people off the rolls for paperwork issues, not for a lack of work.
There's a uniquely American type of institutional cruelty here, where we design a “safety net” that seems engineered to fail the very people it's supposed to catch. It’s less a net and more of an elaborate, high-stakes administrative obstacle course.
The rhetoric is all about self-sufficiency and responsibility, but the reality is a system of bureaucratic attrition. We seem to have this deep, national ambivalence about public good. we feel obligated to provide it, but also compelled to make accessing it a test of endurance, a trial by paperwork. It’s as if the real goal isn’t to ensure care, but to ensure that only the most administratively nimble and fortunate among the vulnerable can successfully claim it. The suffering this causes is real, even if the policy language renders it abstract.
You make it sound like the freeloaders should be allowed to stay.
How many freeloaders are there? Any figures for that? Demonizing the poor is as American as apple pie. Many of those needing Medicaid are working, many more than one job. Oh, but, strangely we don’t hear much about that. It’s so much easier to make it all about character & not circumstances. Meanwhile, do those like you ever question taxpayer underwriting of corporations such as Walmart which doesn’t pay enough for lower level workers to live on, hence they need government assistance. So in essence, we subsidize one of the world’s largest, most profitable corporations. A behemoth that could well afford a little less profit by offering somewhat higher wages to tens of thousands of its employees. Military spending will now reach one trillion. But, of course, all of that politically motivated spending is “necessary.” And don’t we still subsidize big oil?
Trump, Heritage, the Heritage funded/chisen SC majority, the GOP are intent on making the US a dictatorial oligarchy & it seems millions of voters are happy to oblige.