Last year, Arkansas became the first state to impose a work requirement on people receiving Medicaid. This cruel, stupid, vindictive idea is working out just as awfully as you would imagine.
In 2018 alone, more than 18,000 people in Arkansas lost their Medicaid coverage as a result of this moronic, inhuman rule. Is this “good” public policy? Or, not to delve into the poison of partisanship, might it be bad to take away poor people’s health insurance if they cannot satisfy Byzantine and nonsensical rules about pursuing unavailable jobs? Hmm, who can say? As unbiased journalists we have no opinion. We will simply present to you this snippet from a Washington Post story today about how this incompetently implemented and resolutely callous policy is affecting real citizens like Elizabeth Cloinger, who, despite “working seven days most weeks as a home health aide,” was cut off from Medicaid in August (and still has not been reinstated) because she does not own a computer and everyone needed to make an online account to use the new system:
In all these months, Cloinger hasn’t seen a doctor for the swelling in her right foot, which makes it hard to stand for long. Nor has she addressed the throbbing around the scar from her hysterectomy two years ago.
“I won’t go” to the doctor, she said, having just finally paid off — in $10 monthly installments — a hospital bill for the X-rays she needed for a torn tendon before she got onto Medicaid.
“I am just putting it in God’s hands,” Cloinger said. “He is going to let me stay on this Earth to see my grandbaby be raised.”
Good system we have here. Thank you to the Republican Party for supporting Work.