Ronald Reagan and his colleague republicans once called what they called ‘welfare queens’ because they were focused in social editions in the 1970s and eighties, painting a picture of unscrupulous women who worked the system to finance a lush lifestyle.
While they try to justify cutbacks on Medicaid, congress republicans are focused on another Deadbeat -poster -cind: the plowless male video parlor who is connected to his console around the house while receiving free health care that should go to more deserving people.
The images have changed, but the political tactic of the Gop remains the same. By making broad generalizations about the types of people who can incorrectly benefit from federal benefits, they make the idea of cutting cuts virtuous instead of seeming stingy.
With a new, restrictive work requirement for Medicaid and other cost-saving measures that arise as main points in the political debate about their radical domestic policy account, Republicans have tried to play the potential fall-out for Americans who rely on the health care program for the poor. They say that nobody who really deserves help will lose benefits.
To strengthen their case, they claim that freeing the Medicaid roles from Slappers and immigrants without paper who should not get taxpayers aid will shave billions of dollars without gaining benefits for people in need. Their message is that the necessary savings can be achieved by going after the old stands by waste, fraud and abuse.
“You do not want valid employees on a program that is intended for, for example, single mothers with two small children who just try to make it,” said speaker Mike Johnson at CNN in February when he started laying the foundation for the Medicaid-deployment. “For that, Medicaid is not for 29-year-old men who are on their banks and play video games.”
Republist Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado, stacked himself to the observed Bankpotato community.
“If you can work in America, then you should not sit at home to play video games and collect a check,” she said last month after a meeting with President Trump and hearing his pitch for legislation.
Other Republicans, Democrats and data analysts say that most of the medicaid beneficiaries are already working. They note that even if there was an abundance of gamers, they will not save a lot of money from insurance provided by the government, because they do not use much health care.
“They are not on Medicaid because they are falseers,” said Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, about his 1.3 million voters currently on Medicaid. “They are on Medicaid because they cannot afford private health insurance.”
But Republican proponents of cutbacks say that their argument was underlined by a recent analysis of the American Enterprise Institute. By applying the American Time Use Survey and the current population screening, the report estimated that Valide Medicaid recipients who do not work spent about 4.2 hours a day watching television or playing video games, their second most common activity after sleeping. Working Medicaid recipients, said so, spent about 2.7 hours of TV or gaming.
The speaker’s office said that the findings have substantiated Mr. Johnson’s point that some beneficiaries play the system while they play at home.
“The next time a Democrat makes false claims about ‘Medicaid dehsenting’, then remember what they really say is that they want illegal aliens and valid adults to play video games at home to continue to steal resources of those who need it,” said the speaker’s office in a news item.
Nevertheless, a new analysis of the Brookings Institution doubted the potential impact of the new work rule approved by the house, for which childless adults would require without physical limitations to show that they had worked, volunteering or went to school for at least 80 hours a month before they register in Medicaid.
Even if the new requirements are now assessed in the Senate, have some inactive gamers catch, the savings may not be so great, according to the analysis. The 4.3 million people who, according to the study, were on Medicaid without limitations on activities, registered the lowest average Medicaid spending, while 40 percent did not use medical services at all. The authors said their data showed that only 300,000 beneficiaries reported that they did not work, simply because they did not want a job.
“Speaker Johnson’s archetypal young men hanging around in cellars playing video games are not as common as he can imagine, and just don’t use much health care,” said the Brookings report, written by Sherry Glied and Dong Ding. “The rid of this group would only generate modest federal savings, much less than necessary to compensate for a significant part of the tax cuts of the account,” they added.
Democrats say that the Republicans are well aware that millions of Medicaid beneficiaries do not chase away the hours at home and play video games, while eagerly benefit from a program that eligible for a low income. They say that Republicans incorrectly display the situation when pursuing savings to compensate tax cuts in their legislation.
“They are just desperately looking for money and they know that there is a lot of money to be saved by pulling people from well -being,” said Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii. “And so they have to imagine an unworthy person.”
Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat van Connecticut, said that Republicans wanted to justify their Medicaid cuts by ‘health care as a hand -out stigmatize, if it should be something that the entire society can be more productive’.
“I think we are descending into the old ‘welfare queen’ -Demagoguery, and I think it is a bad service,” he said.
When Reagan ran before President in 1976, he peppered campaign slices with the anecdote of a woman from Chicago who had found a way to gather the welfare system through the use of Aliases and other fraud. The claim that the system was full of corruption was intended to awaken anger and resentment among voters who worked for a living.
Although suggestions of widespread cases of people who live a luxurious lifestyle of well -being from the start, the impression has been existing for decades and from time to time in front surfaces in political and policy fights. When the congress improved unemployment benefits during the Covid -Pandemie, conservatives shot out, and said that it would keep extra wages that those who had not already been achieved to work at home.
Mr Johnson and others have accused of unemployed Americans of “cheating” by receiving medicoid coverage when they could work, although the expansion of Medicaid in many states under the affordable care act has made it permissible to obtain coverage without working as long as guidelines with a low income.
“If you can work and you refuse to do this, cheat on the system,” said Mr. Johnson at the end of May on CBS’s “Face the Nation”. He said there was a “moral component” for the Republican push to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients and that it would offer dignity to those who were pushed into the workforce.
The Brookings analysis said that many of those who have no job, are probably exempt from new requirements for reasons such as the care of a family member or other factors. It predicted that the effort would have unintended consequences, such as discouraging those who need Medicaid to qualify for help because of new paperwork requirements.
“Previous efforts to surgically separate the deserving registered from the Slappers, both ineffective and very administratively expensive,” said the report. “Medicaid -work requirements just don’t work as their proponents promise they do that.”
Robert Jimison contributed reporting.
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