By GLEN BIEGEL
The left has declared war on those who would place work or service requirements on those who receive Medicaid and are able-bodied.
The statements made against any who support the work or service requirement are powerful and clear. You are killing people. You are taking away the way of life of Alaskans. You are stealing folks’ healthcare. Let’s review each of these claims and then look at the idea of an able-bodied person receiving a permanent benefit from the view of our declaration of independence and from our religious and moral duty to the poor.
Let’s look at these claims: First: “You are killing people.”
Those who have regular employment live longer than those who do not have regular employment.
- Unemployed individuals have a 63% higher risk of death compared to employed peers—after adjusting for confounders.
- Employment can lead to an increase in life expectancy of up to 10 years, depending on race, gender, and age.
How about: “It is a way of life for Alaskans to be on Medicaid and requiring work or public service is taking away that lifestyle.”
In Alaska, a strong majority of Medicaid adults are already working. According to a recent KFF state fact sheet:
- In Alaska 72% of adult Medicaid recipients are employed:
- 49% full-time
- 23% part-time
- Only 28% are not working.
How about: “You are stealing up to 1/3 of Alaska’s healthcare”
While 32% of Alaskans are on Medicaid, very few are threatened by the work or public service requirements in the BBB.
In fact: Only 8% of Alaska Medicaid recipients fall under the not working or looking for work categories.
That means that 2.6% of Alaskans will have to either get work, look for work, get training, or perform some kind of public service to receive the benefit. Not 1/3, but less than 1/33rd.
Now to the real question for Alaska and for the US which has to do with our national vision when founded, and whether it is right to ensure able-bodied people earn what they get in life in some way.
From the view of an American citizen: If we are given something, are we not beholden to that system, do we not organize our life around the requirements of that ‘ruler’? Do we want to have Medicaid as our ‘King’? A couple phrases from our declaration of independence shed some light on the founding principle of America:
“Give me liberty or give me death.”
“That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…”
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
The themes of the declaration reveal our ultimate goals of individual liberty, moral agency, and the duty to act against injustice.
Is it an injustice to require work or public service for the able-bodied? I will close with this thought from Thomas Aquinas, a Catholic Saint, one of the wisest and most thoughtful people ever born:
“For nothing is more foolish than that in this present life, where men ought so to work that they may live eternally, men should live in idleness. It is great folly to live in idleness in this life; because from idleness, as from an evil teacher, we learn evil knowledge; because through idleness we come to lose the good that lasts forever; because through the short idleness of this life we incur a labor that is eternal.”
As always, Aquinas settles the issue and places the Medicaid war as a struggle between good and evil. When you hear Facebook and YouTube ads telling us that a person must persist in their idleness but still receive goods from the State, you can know that this is the eternal play of good and evil. It is good to require public service or work for society, but especially for the able-bodied recipient of Medicaid.
Glen Biegel is a technology security professional, Catholic father of nine, husband to a saint, and politically active conservative.
Strawman argument.
“Strawman” is a response to something that didn’t happen or is not real. I have personally heard those claims to which Biegel is responding many times. So it is not a strawman. Liberal democrats have indeed made the claims Biegel is responding to.
We are much stronger as a nation when everyone has to pitch in and do what they can to help support themselves and their neighbors. A able body person taking benefits and putting nothing back into the system is thief. And as we have seen in the past when the number of people receiving benefits and putting nothing back grows, poverty grows ghettos grow the people have lower educations and self pride fall off. You only have to look at what has happened over the last 60 years since President Johnson started the whole idea of giving people something for nothing. People who refuse to see this or either fools or they are evil because they are prescribing a way of life No one wants to be part of.
“When you hear Facebook and YouTube ads telling us that a person must persist in their idleness but still receive goods from the State,” I find myself yelling at my computer that they STFU! Of course, they level the charge against Dan Sullivan, because they will be spending boatloads of dark money to kick him out of office.
Excellent examples and explanation. Watch now how the left will twist it. Cry wolf and ask for handouts!
“Give me liberty or give me death”
is not in the Declaration of Independence, it’s a quote from
Patrick Henry.
I had it separated in the original.
They think we’re “killing people”??????? They don’t CARE about killing! In fact, they think it’s a ‘right’ to kill an un-born child in it’s mother’s womb. And also ok to intentionally NOT provide medical care to a newborn, if that’s the mother’s wish…thus allowing the newborn infant to DIE! Don’t let them pin this ‘killing’ accusation upon the good people of the land.
Medicaid is healthcare for the poor , mostly working poor. Tell me how many low paying jobs offer healthcare ? Before I retired I worked in the medical field and most of my check went to pay for insurance . I don’t agree with taking away Medicaid … but there should be some reforms as many people abuse it.
We have alot of homeless people(druggies and alcohlics) on Medicaid, were these included in the stats above?
Remember the nonstop “public service announcement “ during the Barry administration. Telling everyone to log on and apply for disability. It’s been revamped and you just might be eligible.
Call or log on NOW!
Murkowski was able to get Alaska some exemptions and waivers related to Medicaid work requirements. For example, American Indian and Alaska Native individuals are exempted. as well as individuals in high-unemployment areas like rural villages and tiny towns with only seasonal work opportunities. And, of course, the BBB exempts people with certain health conditions and disabilities that limit their opportunities for work, service, or training. People who are primary caregivers or have dependents under the age of 14 are exempt. Furthermore, Alaska has been granted waivers to delay the implementation of work requirements or to ease the administrative burden associated with them.
Any proud American Indian or Alaska Native should be insulted by that exemption.
People move to find work, that tradition started in the US in 1607, 169 years before The Declaration of Independence. They moved from all over the world to find a better life. From Germany, Italy, Norway, Ireland, China, Mexico, Vietnam and Cambodia. And the justification for lifetime welfare is that people live in areas with chronic unemployment?
For Pete’s sake, most of their ancestors relocated from Asia carrying their few possessions with the assistance of some half wild dogs. Most Alaskans moved from other states. It is time to end the status quo of eternal generational poverty that is rural village life. If a person is making a living there, good for them. If they are reliant on welfare, they could have far better lives, far better.
Captain John Smith got it right: “He who does not work, neither shall he eat.”
Jamestown, 1608.
And those people crossed an ocean in a sailing vessel into an unknown situation to better their lives. Time for the chronically unemployed to at least move to jobs in regional hubs, Fairbanks or Anchorage.
Alaska natives do not need Medicaid.
They are all, by Federal Law (& treaty) given free health care by the IHS – Indian Health Service.
If Medicaid was totally erased, Natives would still receive free health care; as they did before the “Great Society”
An old co-worker of mine worked for IHS (pre-LBJ) as a pilot.
He flew to villages and “taxied” patients to Bethel (mosty pregnant women) for 20 years.
The push at ANMC to have all Natives on Medicaid is intense.
The ANMC campus (hospital & the Ted Stevens clinic) badger all Natives to apply.
They bugged us for years to put our 4 kids on it, but I wouldn’t.
They put a lot of pressure on my wife to “get w/ the program” so to speak.
ANMC wants ALL that extra funding and who can blame them.
But it’s a Fed funded program (IHS) trying to get more money from a different Fed program (Medicaid)
Perhaps there should be a push from the AK delegation to up funding for IHS, instead of promoting the “don’t work” program called Medicaid.
George D, you are spot on with your comments re Alaska Natives and Medicaid. Good on you for resisting the push to get your children on Medicaid. You are one proud father!
The State Division of Vocational Rehabilitation needs to step up to help clients on Medicaid find reasonable employment or volunteer positions. MAGA DVR!
At least provide a program and training to help them pass a drug test.
If you think Anchorage has a lot of bums now, wait until the lower 48 freeloaders hear about Lisa’s no-work requirement in Alaska.