I suspect this isn’t the only thing happening in the executive branch that doesn’t get the attention it should. Whether you like or hate Biden personally, this is the reason to vote for Democrats, regardless of the personalities:
It has been overshadowed by months of Democratic infighting and the searing national debate over Jan. 6, but the Biden administration is quietly erasing one of the cruelest legacies of Donald Trump’s presidency. This is a genuine achievement, in both symbolic and practical terms.
On Thursday, the administration rejected Georgia’s proposal to impose work requirements and premiums on Medicaid recipients. This was effectively the last nail in the coffin of Trump’s zombie attempt to make Medicaid more cumbersome and bureaucratic, in hopes of knocking as many people off health coverage as possible.
When Biden took office, nearly 20 mostly Republican-controlled states were in the process of crafting work requirements for Medicaid, on which 76 million Americans rely.
Now, Medicaid work requirements are all but dead in all those states.
That erases a legacy of the Trump administration, which had invited states to submit proposals to impose such requirements. Proposals were eventually approved for 12 states — all with Republican legislatures, governors or both — while a half-dozen others were pending when Trump left office.
In the most visible case, under Arkansas’s 2018 requirements, nearly 17,000 people lost health coverage. That wasn’t necessarily because they weren’t working. It was mainly because it was so difficult to satisfy all the reporting requirements.
Which is a feature, not a bug, of work requirements. By forcing recipients to prove they’re working and navigate a bureaucratic maze to stay in the program, the state gives itself an excuse to kick off those who make a paperwork mistake or miss a reporting deadline.
Biden’s reversal began just after he took office. In February, the administration informed states that it was preparing to withdraw approvals for work requirements granted under Trump.
That is not a Trump thing. The hostility to health care for Americans long predates him. For some inexplicable reason they believe that Americans deserve to die. And their voters have come to believe it too, even when it comes to themselves. I would call it a you-know-what cult but it’s Christmas.
Give a little bit of thanks today that these people are not in charge for the moment. It’s a life saver.