RFK Jr. Is Getting Personal Authority Over Who to Kick Off Medicaid

[Nevilledog]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/08/rfk-hhs-medicaid-work-requirements-cuts/

Freddie Elmore hasn’t worked for around 20 years. Now, he’s trying to figure out how, and if, he can return to the workforce—not because he thinks he can do so while managing his health, but because he is concerned that he will lose Medicaid.

To retain Medicaid coverage, Elmore, who lives with disorders including central pain syndrome and Long Covid, may soon have to work at least 80 hours a month—while caring for his autistic son 49 hours a week, commitments he’s afraid he won’t be medically able to juggle—unless he’s able to win exemptions on terms expected to be set almost entirely by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

In July, Congress passed President Trump’s budget bill, which funds sweeping tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans through an estimated $911 billion in planned cuts to Medicaid, and in particular by establishing requirements that would force most Medicaid users to work at least 80 hours per month in order to stay on its rolls.

The ethos behind Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement blames individual people for their chronic diseases—particularly by associating health conditions with choices like vaccination—and links Medicaid users’ value to their economic productivity, as when Trump’s Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins, said in early July that able-bodied people on Medicaid should replace deported migrant farm workers.

*snip*

[Silent Type]

1. Most of the work requirements I've seen exempt disability and/or caring for a family member. Obviously, it's how they

apply rules.

Don't think work requirements are necessary -- mainly because most work and/or fall into one of exceptions -- but I think people like the example in article will be OK. Don't know that, wish law hadn't been passed, trump is a POS, we should be using this for midterms, etc.