By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--June 7, 2018
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Medicaid recipients would have to submit reports monthly about their compliance with the new rules, which also allow for the requirements to be met through school, vocational or job training, internships and community service. The requirement is waived for a recipient in substance abuse treatment. Other changes made in the original bill:Among the people who would be exempt from the work requirements: pregnant women, people ages 19-20 who had been in the foster care system; disabled people and their caretakers; caretakers of a family member under the age of six; full-time students; the medically frail, and people who have been incarcerated within the last six months. The new work rules are expected to cost the state at least $17.5 million to administer because of the extra workers needed to verify the hours worked by the recipients and upgrades to computer systems. But, according to an analysis done by the House Fiscal Agency, it’s also expected to save between $7 million and $22 million because of lower numbers of Medicaid recipients.
- Making only the people in the Healthy Michigan program — the 680,000 of the 2.4 million people on the plan — subject to the work requirements.
- Changing the age of people who must comply from 19-64 to 19-62.
- Giving people a three-month grace period each year in case they are seasonal employees and, as Shirkey put it, “life happens.”
- Having the bill take effect on Jan. 1, 2020, instead of 2019.
- Maintaining a 48-month limit on benefits.
“This legislation is a twisted joke,” said Sen. Coleman Young II, D-Detroit. “Even with the changes made in the House, it’s still a turd, a shiny turd, but a turd nonetheless.” Sen. Rebekah Warren, D-Ann Arbor, said without including provisions for things like child care and transportation, “We’re setting (Medicaid recipients) up to fail.”Democrats’ objections to work usually focus on things like child care and transportation. The argument is that poor people can’t afford cars and daycare, so it’s cruel to expect them to work. But if they don’t work, what chance do they ever have of no longer being poor? The Democrat way of looking at it keeps them dependent forever rather than ask them to deal with the same complications in life that all the rest of us deal with every day. The bill is very flexible in terms of how you can comply with the requirement, but you have to comply, and it’s good for you and everyone else if you do. A work requirement for welfare – and make no mistake, Medicaid is welfare – is such common sense that it’s hard to find opposition among the general public. Rabid left-wing activists hate it, of course, but almost no one opposes it if they’re not driven to by loyalty to their ideology. Yet it’s taken Michigan this long to pass it, and it’s happened in part because of incentives introduced by the Trump Administration. Here’s another reason this is important: The economy is poised for some of the fastest growth we’ve seen in years, but growth is productivity, and you can’t produce without people to do the work. The Obama Administration introduced a myriad of disincentives to work, and that’s one of the reasons we got the lowest workforce participation rate since the Carter Administration. Measures like this seek to turn that around, and the result will not only benefit the people doing the work but the economy as a whole. Yet the left, which claims to “support the working man,” is losing its mind over people having to work.
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