Senator Barrasso Clears Up Medicaid Reform Missinformation

Wyoming's Senator John Barrasso recently spoke out on misconceptions and misinformation regarding President Trump's plans to reform Medicaid.

In an article just published in The Daily Signal, he attempts to set the record straight.

Below are a few highlights from that piece.

Let me set the record straight: Medicaid is for the vulnerable. It was never meant to cover able-bodied, working-age adults who refuse to work. Nor was it meant to cover illegal immigrants, which the Democrats continue to embrace.

 

Today, there are more than 1.2 million illegal immigrants receiving Medicaid benefits. Today, there are 4.8 million able-bodied, working-age adults who refuse to work who are on Medicaid. That doesn’t strengthen Medicaid. It strains it. It weakens it. It makes it harder for the people who need Medicaid, those who Medicaid was designed for.

It also wastes taxpayer dollars.

Work requirements are common sense. They used to be bipartisan. Democrat President Bill Clinton signed that into law in the 1990s. Democrat President Obama defended it in 2008. Obama said work must be the “centerpiece of any social policy.”

 

Democrats today don’t believe that. They think Clinton was wrong. They think Obama was wrong. They’re for laziness, and they’re for illegal immigrants. The Democrats today are defending dependency, rather than independence. That’s what they’re doing today. That’s what Schumer did on the floor of the United States Senate.

Republicans believe in a safety net—a safety net to help people reach their full potential, to get back up on their feet. We believe in hard work. We believe in work as part of somebody’s identity—their dignity, their self-worth, how they view themselves, a role model for their children.

If you’re healthy and refuse to work, it’s a choice you may want to make. But don’t expect the taxpayers to pay for it. No child, no pregnant woman, or disabled person will lose coverage. But what the Democrats want to do is remove work requirements and continue to fund Medicaid for illegal immigrants. That’s just not fair to everyone else.