After months of pledges not to cut Medicaid, Donald Trump is preparing to cut Medicaid. (See [1][2][3][4] - note those last two are archive.org links because the White House has mysteriously scrubbed the transcripts from the site.) Specifically, the plan is to use some of the usual indirect tactics for making cuts — onerous re-application processes and work requirements that a given percentage of Americans will never complete. Matt Bruenig, writing for the New York Times, responds to this with his usual rebuttal: most people on Medicaid are people we typically think of as unable to work, like children or elderly caregivers. Only 3% of the all Medicaid beneficiaries are able-bodied nonworkers (ABNWs).
In their defense, Matt adds that
there are some services — such as police, fire, library and education services — that are provided to everyone regardless of employment status. Health care services have much in common with police and fire services…refusing medical care to people in their time of need based on how much they happened to work the month before is a cruel and pointless policy.
This is a compelling defense of Medicaid in particular, but it also raises a broader question: what about other welfare benefits? Americans generally seem to think that ABNWs deserve healthcare, but do they also deserve non-emergency benefits like SNAP?
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