THINGS GET REAL BAD IN HEALTHCARE AND HUNGER AFTER THE MIDTERMS!

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eef12n0RRN8

Some disabled people want to advance their careers. They say Medicaid rules stop them : NPR

For years, disability rights advocates have pushed state legislatures to change the limits, arguing that they prevent people like Carter from accepting raises or building savings, for fear of losing crucial medical benefits. Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey and Rhode Island have eliminated such limits over the past five years… 

 To keep her Medicaid coverage, Carter would've had to find a job paying her far less than she was making. Or she could drop her Medicaid coverage and enroll in the school district's health plan. But that plan didn't cover many of the disability-related expenses that Medicaid did…

 https://www.npr.org/2026/08/10/nx-s1-5910791/disabilities-people-work-requirements-medicaid-income-caps-buy-in 

A cancer diagnosis may not be enough: Trump and Democratic states clash in court over who’s too sick to work - POLITICO

The administration declared in an interim final rule released last month that a diagnosis, even for a disease as grave as cancer, isn’t enough to claim an exemption from the 80-hour requirement, unless beneficiaries submit additional proof that they physically can’t work. Democratic attorneys general from 25 states and Washington, D.C. plan to argue the rule is both too strict, in not offering blanket exemptions to people with certain diseases, and too vague, in failing to guide states on how to determine who is too sick to work — and will ask the judge to block the stricter medical frailty policy...

 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/28/trump-dems-court-battle-over-medicaid-work-requirements-01013114

 

States Sue to Block Medicaid Work Requirements – Mother Jones

In a press release, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, who helped lead the suit, said that the “abrupt changes in [federal] implementation of the statute leave states insufficient time to adjust…or effectively communicate to members what is required.” 

“This eleventh-hour attempt to further narrow protections for medically frail Medicaid recipients seeks to punish those who cannot fend for themselves,” said Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Neronha, who is also joining the suit, in a press release…

 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/06/medicaid-work-requirements-rfk-oz-cms-state-attorney-lawsuit/

 

‘A matter of life or death’: the activists confronting Congress about slashing HIV funding

The Trump administration’s new Medicaid rules, issued this month as part of the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, require millions of low-income Americans to prove they are working, studying or otherwise active for at least 80 hours a month just to keep their health coverage. It’s a paperwork hurdle that could cost 5 million to 10 million people their Medicaid by 2028, the Urban Institute estimates. For the roughly 40% of Americans with HIV who rely on Medicaid at any given time, and the 85% who depend on it at some point in their lives, the new rules could cost them their lives. 

“For people with HIV, that’s a matter of life or death, because if your treatment is interrupted, even for a short time, you can lose viral load suppression,” said Virginia Shubert, a senior policy adviser at Housing Works, the New York City advocacy organization dedicated to ending the HIV/Aids and homelessness crises. “It goes beyond the law, and it’s very cruel.”…

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/22/us-hiv-aids-funding-cuts-activism

 

The White House Just Made Medicaid Work Requirements Even Worse – Mother Jones

“It’s hard not to think that the cruelty of the policy is the point,” East said. “Adding work requirements to Medicaid is part of a massive shift in our safety net in this country under this administration to make it as small and hard to access as possible.”…

 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/06/hhs-medicaid-work-requirements-health-care-federal-rule/

Dr. Oz tries to justify Medicaid work requirements starting in 2027.

 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_pZL3-aFh-Q

Strict Medicaid work rules could harm people with serious illnesses, advocates say : NPR

The nearly 400-page interim final rule released Monday makes that process even harder. For months, federal officials have been meeting with states informally and giving them guidance, and states understood that people with conditions where continuous health insurance coverage was really important would be exempt. 

"What the rule says, as published, is that that's actually not enough," McIntyre explains. "The condition or the disease needs to be actively interfering with your ability to work. So people with early stage cancer who are in radiation treatment but still have the capacity to work, or people who have HIV but can still technically work, are not exempted from the work requirement." 

 McIntyre and others foresee situations where a person newly diagnosed with cancer, who is working, loses Medicaid because they don't fill out the paperwork correctly. That could lead to patients losing coverage when they need it most…

 https://www.npr.org/2026/06/03/nx-s1-5845097/medicaid-work-requirements-cuts-hiv-cancer

The impact of Trump’s food stamp changes on single parents : NPR

"We're going to see increases in poverty. We're going to see increases in food insecurity"…

https://www.npr.org/2026/03/10/nx-s1-5737476/snap-trump-work-requirements-families 

 

Trump’s SNAP Rules Are About to Imperil Food Access for Millions – Mother Jones

" These work requirements aren't really about promoting work. They're about dehumanizing people and attacking the 'other,'" Joel Berg, CEO of the nonprofit Hunger Free America, told ABC News. "Most SNAP recipients are pro-work, and most SNAP recipients are already working, or children, or people with disabilities, or older Americans. So all this is sort of a diversionary debate."…

 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/01/trumps-snap-rules-are-about-to-imperil-food-access-for-millions/

He built Michigan’s Medicaid work requirement system. Now he’s warning other states : Shots - Health News : NPR

Michigan's health director spent a year and $30 million building a work requirements system for Medicaid. The problems he encountered have him worried now that 40 states must do the same by 2027...

Interview: 

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/08/08/nx-s1-5493417/michigan-robert-gordon-medicaid-work-requirements

New Medicaid work rules put states in a bind

"The people who wrote this were not trying to make anything work. They were trying to make this as difficult as possible because they want states to dump Medicaid expansion altogether or dump as many expansion adults as possible through red tape," Schneider said...

https://www.axios.com/2025/07/14/medicaid-work-rules-states-requirements 

 

Health care after the Medicaid cuts in Trump’s big, beautiful bill: less care, more deaths | Vox

The US is sabotaging its own health care system…

https://www.vox.com/health/417639/trump-medicaid-health-insurance-big-beautiful-bill 

 

Death by a thousand paper cuts

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/yq5TeB-DO5c

 

Medicaid Work Requirements, Debunked

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzMqYttKv1c

As Republicans weigh Medicaid work requirements, Georgia offers a warning - The Washington Post

Only a small number of people were enrolled in the state program, and administrative costs exceeded spending on medical care...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/05/16/medicaid-work-trump-cuts/

 

Why work requirements for Medicaid "don't work"

The thing is: You can't live off health insurance — it doesn't pay the bills or provide food. 

 By the numbers: There's little evidence that people are somehow free-riding on Medicaid.…

 

 

Republicans love to make up fake crises. Here are five of the biggest

As the super-wealthy and big corporations pour money into politics – especially into the Republican party – they don't want the rest of America to notice they're rigging the economy for their own benefit, that their unrestrained greed is worsening the climate crisis and that they're also undermining democracy. 

The game of the Republicans and their major donors is to deflect and distract – to use scapegoating, racism and outright lies to disguise what's really going on...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/01/republicans-fake-crises-five-biggest

GOP's proposed expansion of SNAP work requirements targets many low-income people in their early 50s – but many of them already work

It's reasonable to expect that the new work requirements would force many people to make hard choices between the caregiving arrangements for their loved ones and keeping their benefits. Also, since people who have poor health may not be able to work, they may find themselves unable to put food on the table if they lose SNAP benefits… 

Additional research has found that work requirements tied to aid programs don't get more low-income people to enter the labor force. Studies also have found that these policies cause many people who are eligible for assistance to lose their benefits due to paperwork hassles and unclear guidelines…https://theconversation.com/gops-proposed-expansion-of-snap-work-requirements-targets-many-low-income-people-in-their-early-50s-but-many-of-them-already-work-205960

‘Even worse than it sounds:’ Warren rips GOP push for Medicaid work requirements

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2lQHDPdNUY