Bloomberg.net Argues Against Medicaid Expansion: “It Encourages Those Sick Lazy Poors To Not Work”
More: best-argument-yet-against-medicaid-expansion
Opponents of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion have traditionally argued that it will significantly burden state budgets and provide people with substandard health coverage. A new academic paper suggests what may be the strongest argument yet against the expansion: that it will keep many beneficiaries in poverty because it creates strong disincentives for work.
Researchers Laura Dague, Thomas DeLeire, and Lindsay Leininger argue in a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper that Medicaid enrollment will lead to significant and lasting reductions in employment among childless adults. The paper is noteworthy primarily because it focuses its analysis on low-income adults without children — — a group that previously was largely ineligible for Medicaid but will get access because of Obamacare’s expansion of the program. It reinforces a July 2013 paper, which found that the loss of public health insurance stimulated job search activities, employment growth and the acquisition of other health insurance coverage among childless adults.
The Congressional Budget Office also noted in February that Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion would reduce incentives to work and have a modest effect on the overall supply of labor. While there is a debate in the academic literature about the effects of the Medicaid expansion on labor supply, that debate has tended to focus on parents who enroll in Medicaid, rather than adults without kids.
Of all the sick [sic!] arguments against Obamacare & providing health insurance for the poor and unemployed, this has to be the most WTF thing that I have ever seen.
It starts with the old chestnut HURR HURR!!!! POORS LOVE BEING ON TEH WELFARES IT BETTER THAN TEH WORK!!!! and takes it to the eleventieth level. Nobody in the entire history of “welfare” ever said “I will never look for a job because I have this awesome Medicaid!”
What could possibly go wrong with forcing a bunch of poor, sick people to go to their jobs (usually in fast food service) and handle other people’s food?