Work requirements are a common-sense reform

Medicaid is the government programme that is supposed to help the poor afford health care. Its cost to taxpayers has skyrocketed in the last few years, consuming more than 12 percent of federal tax revenue collected by 2025.

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Projected Medicaid spending from 2025-2034 (before the One Big Beautiful Bill) was expected to total $8.2 trillion, $2.7 trillion more than if Medicaid had grown proportionally to the population and inflation, according to the Tribune News Service.

Before the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), Medicaid was a state-by-state programme and often was available only to a subset of people below the poverty line, especially mothers and children, but generally not working-age, work-capable adults. The ACA allowed states to expand Medicaid to cover every person below the poverty line and some above it, regardless of circumstances. The federal government pays 90% of the costs for those who became eligible due to the ACA expansion. Then, during the Biden administration, Congress and the president made a concerted effort to make enrolment easier, disenrolment harder, and programme integrity maintenance weaker.