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Trump Admin. Taking Steps To Add Work Req. To Medicaid

Published

6 years ago

on

(Via Zerohedge)

After passing the Trump tax cuts late last year, the White House revealed that immigration, welfare reform and the administration’s nascent infrastructure plan would be its top priorities in 2018.

And while lawmakers say they’re close to a tentative immigration compromise to preserve DACA protections by packaging them with a border-security package that will presumably include some funding for the president’s promised border wall, the White House is already starting its crackdown on Medicaid.

To wit, the administration issued guidance early Thursday that will force people trying to collect Medicaid that they are working, or preparing to work. The policy change, according to the Washington Post, is the biggest blow to Medicaid in the program’s 50-year history.

However, it’s widely expected that any attempts to implement this policy will be met with a court challenge by the states, which administer Medicaid, and advocacy groups.

To be sure, 10 states are already lined up to adopt the new policy. They’re just waiting for federal permission to impose work requirements on able-bodied adults in the medicaid program.

Furthermore, three other states are contemplating them. Health officials could approve the first waiver – probably for Kentucky – as soon as Friday, according to two people with knowledge of the process.

As WaPo explains, the trend of imposing limits on Medicaid began two decades ago when a system of unlimited cash assistance was replaced by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

The guidance represents a fundamental and much-disputed recalibration of the compact between the government and poor Americans for whom Medicaid coverage provides a crucial pathway to health care.

The idea of conditioning government benefits on “work activities” was cemented into welfare more than two decades ago, when a system of unlimited cash assistance was replaced by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families with its work requirements and time limits. The link between government help and work later was extended to anti-hunger efforts through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as food stamps are now called.

But most health policy experts, including a few noted conservatives, have regarded the government insurance enabling millions of people to afford medical care as a right that should not hinge on individuals’ compliance with other rules.

Despite promising during the campaign to leave Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare untouched, Trump has more recently signaled that he would seek to limit access to benefits for a program that was adopted as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs.

That tone was cemented in March when the newly sworn in administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Seema Verma, dispatched a letter to governors encouraging “innovations that build on the human dignity that comes with training, employment and independence.”

Government lawyers cautioned that they would need time to establish a legal justification for the new requirements that could withstand a court challenge. Apparently, the prevailing view adopted by conservatives is that working “promotes good health” which they can use to justify that this policy change would “further the objectivs” of Medicaid.

The legal issue is that states must obtain federal permission to depart from Medicaid’s usual rules, using a process known as “1115 waivers” for the section of the law under which the program exists. To qualify for a waiver, a state must provide a convincing justification that its experiment would “further the objectives” of Medicaid.

Unlike the 1996 rewrite of welfare law, which explicitly mentions work as a goal, Medicaid’s law contains no such element, and critics contend rules that could deny people coverage contradict its objectives. To get around this, the 10-page letter argues that working promotes good health and repeatedly asserts that the change fits within the program’s objectives. The guidance cites research that it says demonstrates people who work tend to have higher incomes associated with longer life spans, while those who are unemployed are more prone to depression, “poorer general health,” and even death.

“[A] growing body of evidence suggests that targeting certain health determinants, including productive work and community engagement, may improve health outcomes” the letter says. “While high-quality health care is important for an individual’s health and well-being, there are many other determinants of health.”

If the first approvals are issued this week, expect the first court challenges to arrive immediately after.

“This is going to go to court the minute the first approval comes out,” predicted Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors.

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Culture

Trump Is Poised To Take 2024 By Storm

Published

2 years ago

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January 23, 2022

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Biden has unsuccessfully been able to reform any issues left by the Trump administration and quite frankly has only made it worse. Inflation and the economy is hurting everyone, especially lower income voters who ironically voted for Biden. This has set off a windstorm for Biden as his approval rating goes further down the drain. With little hopes of any major policy wins before the 2022 election, Biden’s Administration, which championed “getting things done”, has stopped before it really even got off the ground.

With 2022 around the corner we will see a slue of Republican Presidential challengers, with Trump of course, being at the center of the pack. Rumors have it that Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and the like of Mitt Romney will all join the nomination, however this is only rumor and speculation. Trump however, will become the nominee. It would be hard for anyone to top someone who has already been President, even a firebrand like DeSantis, who has garnered  national support for a Presidential run.

Biden has failed so miserably that when a another Democrat attempts to challenge Trump’s economy compared what we are in now, it will be completely inexcusable. Not to mention the major social engineering the majority of parents and Americans are rejecting in terms of the LGBTQ Mafia Agenda & BLM. Biden, if anything, has completely destroyed the Democratic party’s chance of being a favorite with middle and upper-income voters, setting a disasters for the Democrats in 2024.

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Politics

Lauren Witzke: Among Several Children on Hunter Biden Laptop, Including Chris Coon’s Daughter

Published

3 years ago

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October 25, 2020

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Well, folks. The dam is finally breaking on what is exactly going on with the Hunter Biden laptop scandal that the corporate media has refused to cover, simultaneously big tech is clamping down attempts to use their platform to share the story. And now we know why, because it involves underage children.

This weekend, Senatorial Candidate in Delaware and America First Patriot, Lauren Witzke, has exposed the most damning allegation yet. With an official police source confirming that Chris Coon’s Daughter is one of several children on the Hunter Biden laptop.

There are other allegations going around possible connections to foreign children being on the Hunter Biden laptop as well as several children of other politicians including one of Barack Obama’s daughter.

This only further proves Joe Biden and his entire family, and Chris Coons, are completely compromised by foreign entities and domestic deep state actors within our Government. They hold no allegiance to anything but what their masters tell them to do, because at the end of the day they are at the whims of others leaking this information and publicly destroying them and their career.

We can only imagine more damning allegations are coming to break now that we have a first look at just how explosive the “Laptop From Hell”, as President Donald Trump puts it, really is.

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Politics

Trump Judges & The Purge

Published

3 years ago

on

August 16, 2020

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I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by six.

That great lyric from Ice Cube has more bite and meaning in the run up to the 2020 election. Now we have the investigation of the investigators. The Mueller investigation and everything it has encompassed is now being scrutinized. We are finally looking at indictments and guilty pleas from the corrupt cabal that tried to bring down, frame, jail and impeach a duly elected, INNOCENT president and anyone in his sphere. Getting to the point of investigating the investigators has been a long hard slog.

We did not foresee how really deep and treacherous the swamp really was. You could investigate, indict and try someone like a Hillary Clinton for example, and someone of authority in that chain is a corrupt actor from the Deep State and you will then see the guilty party skate free. Or you can have a completely innocent Mike Flynn, Roger Stone, George Papodopoulos railroaded by a corrupt judge. The Michael Flynn case is the most glaring. The DOJ has dropped the case and charges against him and in an unprecedented move the judge does not drop the case, he extends it as if he is the prosecutor.

So there is a light at the end of the tunnel my friends. Donald Trump has been appointing a record number of federal judges. This is a brilliant move and somewhat frustrating and time consuming. But there is a method to the madness. Why investigate, indict and try just for a Deep State judge to let the guilty party walk free? Donald Trump has appointed over 300 judges and counting. More will be appointed to the bench and now there is a more likely chance when the guilty parties are tried, there will be justice. So there is a silver lining in this swamp covered cloud.

News@11

By Michael Ameer

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