A D.C.-area federal appeals court has now struck down a major Trump administration policy initiative designed to whittle down the number of people on Medicaid. On Friday, the court ruled against a work requirement for Medicaid recipients that had gone into effect in the state of Arkansas, which is among a number of red states across the country where that policy had been attempted. The court ruled that the requirement was “arbitrary and capricious” and steamrolled over the explicitly stated, statutory purpose of the Medicaid program, which is to provide health care and not to penalize poor Americans for a lack of work.
The Arkansas work requirement program was the only one that actually had a chance to go into effect before a judge or judges ruled against it, and the negative effects had already piled up — some 18,000 people lost their health coverage. Reagan-appointed Judge David Sentelle insisted:
‘Failure to consider whether the project will result in coverage loss is arbitrary and capricious.’
Advocates hailed the ruling as a victory for the low income Americans whose interests the Trump administration has attempted to ignore.
Arkansas Legal Aid attorney Kevin De Liban, whose organization helped challenge the state’s work requirement, commented:
‘The Court recognized the tragic harm that these work requirements have caused people in Arkansas doing their best to get ahead. Now, more than two hundred thousand Arkansans on the program can rest easier knowing that they’ll have health care when they need it.’
The work requirement’s attack on low income Americans was not alone among policies from the Trump administration. The president’s team has argued in court, for instance, that the entire Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, should be overturned, protections for people with pre-existing conditions and all. Currently, despite Trump’s pompous and hollow claims to protect those people, his administration does not have any plan on the table to actually shore up any protections for those with pre-existing conditions in the absence of the Obamacare that they want to get rid of.
Additionally, although these measures are a long way from official status, the Trump administration just recently proposed huge cuts to Medicaid totaling almost $1 trillion. They also proposed cuts to Social Security, both of which easily disprove Trump’s very recent claims that he would protect the social programs. Thus, either he’s an incompetent fool, a brazen liar, or both.
Health care is one of a number of issues weighing on voters heading into the 2020 general presidential election later this year, although repeatedly, majorities of Democratic voters have insisted that they prioritize defeating Trump over any particular policy issue. Currently, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders leads Democratic presidential primary candidates in national polling and some polls in some key states like Texas and California, both of which have huge numbers of delegates to give for the party’s eventual nominating convention. One recent Quinnipiac University of a possible general election match up between Bernie and Trump had the Vermont Senator ahead nationally by a full eight percent. On average, he leads by 4.3 percent.
