05/31/2025
Details on Medicaid cuts and SNAP from Trump's "big beautiful bill."
Medicaid:
One of the most controversial changes in the Big Beautiful Bill is to impose a work requirement on supposedly "able-bodied" adults to maintain eligibility for Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans. The requirement is spelled out as 80 hours a month of work or volunteering. The implementation is left up to states, some of which are committed to expanding health coverage, but others which have long been ideologically opposed. Enrollees must often navigate a maze of forms and bureaucratic hurdles to establish and maintain eligibility - even before this new work requirement - because Medicaid contains strict income caps. Recipients must prove they are, in fact, poor. The Big Beautiful Bill however adds insult to injury. People who are kicked off Medicaid by failing to navigate the requirements around work and work-reporting, will be punished by becoming ineligible for subsidies for individual insurance plans sold under Obamacare. By design, the Trumpy Medicaid changes will eliminate coverage for 10.3 million people, according to the CBO.
SNAP
Work requirements are fetishized throughout the Big Beautiful Bill, and also apply to recipients of SNAP, the acronym for the federal food assistance program. As passed, the House bill would expand work requirements in SNAP on adults up to the age of 65. (Current work requirements phase out at 55). It would also require parents with children as young as eight to work outside the house, turning another generation of young poor children into latchkey kids. According to modeling by the Urban league, the Big Beautiful Bill - which so richly rewards billionaires and their heirs - would be financed in part by taking food out of the mouths of hungry families. As many as 2.7 million households would lose food benefits, with the average blow to the family grocery budget totaling $254 a month.
AWFUL! AWFUL! SHAME ON REBUBLICANS!
