7-16-25 - 9am - Medicaid Work Requirements

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks for the help, guys. I thanks Dreg And I
did go past the crunch, but at that point I
couldn't even remember if I was in my right nostril
or my left nostril. So I went ahead and did
both clockwise and counterclockwise.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
And I do.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Feel like a new person, I mean, a completely different outlook.
And does Denver have one of those maps like San
Francisco about poop areas because I need to know where
to poop today.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Oh no, Denver does not have those maps because every
area is a poop area. You don't need a map, sweetheart.
Just you know, walk out on the front, you know, sidewalk,
go down, you know, get take an uber or just
you know, no take no, no, no, no no, don't
take an uber because that might help that that's money
that could be spent on RTD. So take a bus

(00:52):
and just pool on the bus.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
Might I suggest in front of the Independence Institute for
John Caldera.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, because he likes to I could. That's exactly right,
give those away. So just go over to the Independence
Institute and uh, you know they they've kind of got
a gate now, but you know, John didn't care. Just
anywhere around the building. Just pup anywhere around the building.
Uh in NPR, which may lose money this week.

Speaker 4 (01:21):
This message comes from Subaru as part of their Subaru
Loves the Earth initiative. They have partnered with the Arbor
Day Foundation and we'll distribute over one hundred thousand trees
this year, growing greener, healthier communities for generations to come.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Wait a minute, that's the story is brought to you
by some Subaru or something. Well, what what what? Why
do they need our money? It just just hit me
as I was.

Speaker 4 (01:49):
Listening more than a car company.

Speaker 5 (01:52):
Agriculture Secretary Brook Rollins says the immigration crackdown on farms
will continue. Speaking at a press conference last week, she
said there would be no amnesty under any circumstances.

Speaker 6 (02:04):
Mass deportations continue, but in a strategic and intentional way
as we move our workforce toward more automation and toward
a one hundred percent American workforce.

Speaker 5 (02:13):
And Rolins suggested who could replace migrants in the fields.

Speaker 6 (02:17):
They're thirty four million able bodied adults in our medicaid program.
There are plenty of workers in America under Did you
catch that?

Speaker 2 (02:26):
There are some thirty million whatever abled body adults on
the Medicaid program. It's new tax and spending law.

Speaker 5 (02:34):
Many Medicaid enrollees will now have to meet work requirements.
More than eighteen million Americans will be affected, according to
the Congressional Budget Office.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
What does that mean effected? You might actually if you
get a job.

Speaker 5 (02:47):
What reaction from farm Country to Rollin's idea has been skeptical.

Speaker 7 (02:53):
Flat out They're not going to work in my industry
at all.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
I don't care what you pay them.

Speaker 5 (03:00):
Manuel Kunya Junior is the president of the NISE Farmers League.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Oh, president of a farmers league that says, Oh, they're
not going to work for me. They're not going to
work for me. So the work requirements for Medicaid. We're
all in the news as I was traveling every now,
I can't say that. Almost all the coverage I have

(03:25):
seen describes this as some sort of morality play. On
the right, we shouldn't give federally paid free health care
to able bodied young men who choose not to work. Right,
I mean on the right. I kind of agree. On
the left, people are going to die, of course in

(03:48):
pr but that that's an eight minute story. I'm not
going to play the whole thing. Oh you want to
hear the whole thing. I don't care. I'll play the
whole thing. I don't care. That bleeding story that the
keeper work alone. They go on to describe to document
twenty hours a week of work or training or school

(04:09):
or volunteering is such a horrible burden that people will
just choose to die instead. Even a thirty five dollars
copey is just somehow heartless. Oh, they just go on
and on.

Speaker 5 (04:23):
An audience over five hundred farmers in California's Central Valley,
she says he's seen this movie before. In the nineties,
welfare reform brought new work requirements for people on government assistance.
Cunya participated in a program trying to pair people on
welfare with farm jobs. Officials identified five hundred and sixty

(04:46):
with relevant work experience and reached out to them. Out
of those, Counya says, three actually took a job.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Hmm, I wonder whyness at least those who understand the
limits of their profession don't really have anything special to
say about this sort of moral judgment except that, well,
it's wrong to be asking about it. You should not

(05:15):
question this, I mean, you should not even think about
work requirements. Depending whether one should support the spending of
other people's money based on the anecdotal moral worthiness of
the recipients. Well, that's not a great way to produce
effective public policy. In my opinion. Economics knows about incentives,

(05:36):
not transfers. It knows about cause and effect, not moral
worthiness of force philanthropy. Incentives are the key case for
work requirements. Now, Medicaid, you know, is free health insurance
so long as you earn less than the upper limit.

(05:57):
If you earn more than that limit, medicate. Go to
the experts Google for medical In California, the income limit
is generally up to one hundred and thirty eight percent
of the federal poverty level for adults and up to
two hundred and sixty six percent of the federal poverty
level for children. For example, doctor Google says in twenty

(06:22):
twenty five, a single adult can earn up to twenty
one thousand, five hundred ninety seven dollars annually to qualify
for Medicaid. A family of four can earn up to
forty four thousand, three hundred and sixty seven dollars. For children,
the income limit is higher, with a family of four

(06:43):
potentially qualifying with an income up to eighty five thousand,
five hundred nineteen dollars. So let's just stick with the
twenty one thousand, five hundred ninety seven dollars for single
adult to qualify for medical in California. So you earn

(07:05):
up to twenty one thousand, five hundred ninety seven dollars,
you've got medical twenty one thousand, five hundred ninety eight dollars,
and you lose medical. So, as they would say, Houston,
we got a problem because people whose incomes are near
that limit. What now, you have a huge incentive to

(07:26):
not work one more hour, not to work harder at all,
not to study, not to take a better job, not
to move, not to do anything. If that would cause
your income to exceed the income limit. Now you might
you might just dismiss losing medical as a significant disincentive.

(07:47):
But work disincentives come from every single social program, and
they all work together, not each acting in isolation. And
I think people don't realize that a medicaid recipient might
also have food stamps. Food stamps has an income limit.

(08:08):
It's also about one hundred and thirty percent of the
poverty line. So if you rise from say one hundred
and twenty percent of the poverty line to one hundred
and forty percent of the poverty line, you lose both
SNAP and Medicaid. You add taxes, phase out of earned income,
child tax credits, affordable or Section eight housing, income limits,

(08:29):
income limits for education subsidies, all the say down to
the low income bus pass and free tolls. And the
marginal tax rate on low American low income Americans is
as high as one hundred percent. And there are a
lot of cliffs that you can go over. So in
a really perverse way, the income tests do not include

(08:53):
non cash benefits, so that means that signing up for
another government program doesn't trigger the loss of one, but
working does trigger the loss of one. So you can
sign up for all the different programs and you're not
going to lose anything. And in addition to that, going

(09:13):
back to the California, at least according to Google, that
the family of four could have an income of eighty five,
five hundred and nineteen dollars and qualify for all of
those things I just described, but you're one dollar more, Boom,
you're out it the income since it doesn't include the

(09:36):
non cash benefits, you can sign up for all of
these programs, and it doesn't trigger the loss of one
single program. But if you do work because you want
to earn more for your family than boom, you'll lose everything.
None of this makes sense, So it begs the question,

(09:58):
why don't we just remove the income limits altogether? Have
you thought about that? Have you thought through that? Medicaid
spends about ten thousand dollars per recipient, not household per recipient.
So if everybody got medicaid, eliminating that part of the

(10:18):
distancingive effect, that would cost let's just say three hundred
you know, forty million, three hundred and fifty million people
times ten thousand, you're talking about three point five trillion dollars.
That's now half the federal budget right there. So government
transfers have got to be limited in some sense to

(10:39):
people who truly need them. But income as an indicator
of need has got a serious problem in that. And
I know that if you are a left thinking individual,
this will come as a surprise to you. Income is
not an immutable characteristic. In fact, I kind of despise

(11:01):
the term low income person. There's really no such thing
as a low income person. There is a person who
at a particular moment is not earning very much for
a whole host of reasons, including choices that they have
made and for mutable circumstances, as well as as much
smaller component of innate and immutable characteristics. Even if we

(11:27):
were to remove the phase out disincentive, there's a second distincentive,
whether or not the program phases out with more income.
Why bother working if you can get free or at
least highly subsidized food, housing, healthcare, and actually sometimes just
some actual cash handouts. You know, work is hard and

(11:49):
sometimes not much fun unless you get to do what
Dragon and I are doing. Remember the Obamacare debates, because
during those debates, the cabal was full of stories about
the awful situation of people who worked but they didn't
really need the money, and they would work. Why just

(12:11):
to get health insurance? Well, it's a darn good reason
to work. I don't think it's a bad reason to work.
I think it's actually a good reason to work. Oh,
I would really like to have health insurance. I think
I'll go get a job. Oh I really would like
to be able to buy whatever it is you can't buy,
which I don't think is very much on snap. So

(12:31):
I think I'll get a job so I can buy
what I want to buy. If you're an economist, they
call this. They call these the substitution effect working less
if the government takes away benefits when you earn more,
and the income effect, which is working less if you

(12:51):
have money from other sources. You know, obviously trust fund kids,
you're a trust fund kid. You probably don't work as
hard as a normal person, even when they face the
same or even better opportunities to turn time and effort
into after tax consumption. These are just common sense effects

(13:14):
which your grandmother could probably tell you about. Economics helps
to formalize and quantify them, and occasionally to ridiculously deny
them under a cloud of some sort of fashionable econometrics
that they like to use. But the trade off of
help for disincentive doesn't really have an easy answer. Therefore,

(13:38):
inner work requirements, well, if work does not pay literally,
one can try to offset some of the distancinging by
forcing people to work in order to receive benefits. The
incentive of the work requirement formula does something to offset
the distancentive of the necessarily income capped benefits. And I

(13:59):
say necessarily because if we didn't cap the have an
income cap on the benefits, then we'd all qualify for them. Right. Sure,
it's an imperfect fix. That you work that you do
though you don't want to, in order to persuade a
bureaucrat to sign a check is going to be a

(14:20):
lot different than work you do voluntarily in order to
get paid in order to get money. Would you want
such an employee? Which kind of employee would you rather want?
A one that's just trying to get enough money to
get the benefits or one that is doing it voluntarily

(14:40):
in order to get money. You see, I think the
right measure of work is this, will somebody pay you
to do it, not how many hours a week you
spend at it. Well, they just pay you to do it. Now,
of course, I know there's a whole Swiss cheese of exemptions.
It would be interesting to see how quickly, say the
State of California bureaucracy that certifies if your work counts

(15:05):
as work and program beneficiary can gain the system so
that everybody qualifies. You think about people of medical digging around,
you can find again using doctor Google, an artist mostly
involved in with left wing politics, mostly living office girlfriend.

(15:30):
He is probably exactly what the right does not want
to support. Now, how does medical treat his so called work,
does twenty hours a week as a self employed political
artist count when he had a health issue. His story

(15:51):
talks about just how awful medical is. It actually makes
the National Health Service kind of look like the mail
clinic can compare. But some exemptions make sense. They've got
to make sense. The program was originally intended for people
who really could not work, not as a British national
health service for anyone's low income. So that too is

(16:15):
a moral question, more a moral question than an economic question.
But if we have a walesfare, if we're gonna have
a welfare system with necessarily huge incentives and the moral
hazard that comes with that, you've got to do something
to offset the distincentives. In the Nordic countries, which I

(16:38):
don't think the left has seen since the nineteen eighties
before they started ditching socialism, are pretty hard knows about
controlling distincentives, and they're hard knows about requiring people to
work in order to receive benefits. But nobody into Cabal
wants to talk about that because they have visited since
they started doing these socialist programs. Back in the nineteen eighties,
or in the case of the National Health Service right

(17:00):
after World War Two. If instead we could frame the
discourse as, really, there are distancities, and there are there
is a moral question involved here, it might make more sense.
I just think that if you're going to get some
sort of subsidy from people who are out there choosing

(17:22):
to work and want to work, then you have to have,
you know, some skin in the game too. What's wrong
with that, mor Mike.

Speaker 8 (17:30):
I saw on the news this morning that the Colorado
school lunch program is way over budget. Surprise, surprise. It
was projected to be forty eight million to seventy million
dollars per year. Actual price one hundred and fifty million dollars.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
Well, you give away something for free, everybody's going to
want it. And that really is one of the laziest
art in some politics. You can't cut that program. You're
gonna leave people hanging, and that's cruel. The sad part
is that's also one of the most successful political arguments

(18:12):
that you can make, because it's a policy not based
on rationality, it's a policy based on emotion. Do I
want kids in school to be hungry?

Speaker 5 (18:23):
No?

Speaker 2 (18:23):
Because they can't learn if they're hungry. But oh and
you can't. You can't have some kids pay and other
kids not pay, because that might be embarrassing. And I've
always wondered embarrassing to who the kids who are paying
the kids who are not paying. Why do you know

(18:44):
if someone's pay or not paying? Do they not have
can they not have the equivalent of like a library
card or a debit card or something.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
It's been a minute since my kids have been in school.
Both of them graduated on all eight years ago. Yeah,
but they had a a code, a four digit code
that was linked to their account. Okay, and so all
they would you know, hit it is one two one
two and it yeah, credited their account. So if you
are a recipient of free meals, nobody knows.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
Nobody knows you tell them so only the cashier at
the end of the line sees that, yeah, yeah, it's
it's And actually that fits. That fits in with what
I wanted to finish up on the whole Medicaid thing.
Do you and I want to be generous? I do.

(19:37):
I think you do too, But I want to choose
my generosity. I want to pick and choose, and I
don't want to be forced And in fact, if you
force me to be generous, is it really generosity? It's not.
But as I said, it's a successful political argument. Democrat

(20:00):
and some Republicans have been making for months that oh,
you can't cut that program. And they've been doing this
about Medicaid. You know, when the OBQ passed a couple
of weeks ago, it eliminated one trillion dollars in waste
from Medicaid. Do you know that it has since twenty nineteen,

(20:25):
since COVID do you know that the cost of Medicare
has grown by more than sixty six zero percent and
is slated to increase by another trillion dollars over the
next ten years. So again, the cuts are not cuts.
The cuts are reductions and growth typical inside the beltwagh

(20:48):
bull crap. But as that old as that OBQ, the
big beautiful bill made its way through Congress, the cabal
gladly did the bidding of the Democrats, because well they're
part of the cabal, by almost literally screaming from the
rooftops about all the poor people who were going to
be cut off from the safety net. But the reality

(21:10):
is that millions had become couch potatoes, and they should
be or maybe would be, I don't care, pick out
whichever word you want. They could or should be working
and providing their own income, because Medicaid was not designed
to cater to individuals who have the capacity to provide

(21:31):
for themselves. Republicans that introduced work requirements for able bodied
recipients of Medicaid benefits, and even those you know they
don't even those don't take effect until December thirty first
of next year. And the other major change was to

(21:54):
eject illegal aliens off the Medicaid rolls, which I don't
think they should be on in the first place, but
to nobody's surprise, a bunch of Democrat run states had
added them. Anyway, Colorado looking at you. But none of
those details matter to the people inside the Beltway. You
can't cut that narrative is the only thing that matters.

(22:17):
The truth matters. Though I said that this is the
laziest argument you can make in politics. Well, the American
Enterprise Institute Kevin Corinth lays out some I guess not
so shocking truth. This is what AEI says. Quote for

(22:43):
Medicaid recipients who do not report working, the most common
activity after sleeping is watching TV and playing video games.
They spend four point two hours per day watching television
and playing video games, or one hundred and twenty five
hours during a thirty day month. That is more than

(23:06):
fifty percent higher than the eighty hours they would be
required to work or otherwise engage with the community. During
at least some months under the Reconciliation Bill, they spend
on average six point one hours per day or one
hundred and eighty four hours per month on all socializing, relaxing,

(23:29):
and leisure activities, including television and video games. That's what
you're paying for now. Democrats want you to think that
it's cruel somehow to ask those recipients of your money
to put down the video game, to turn off the television,
and just spend eighty hours a month doing something productive.

(23:54):
Something productive. You don't have to be a steel worker,
a longshoreman. You don't have to dig ditches, just do something.
The Wall Street Journal's editorial board put it this way.
Quote the Democratic position is that MEDICAIDS should be a free,
universal benefit for men who refuse to work. I'd add this,

(24:20):
it's not helping people to enable them, which is what
we're doing. We're enabling them to remain dependent on a
government program im perpetuity, while they fill their time with
a bunch of vain pursuits watching television, playing video games.
Redistributing your tax money to abled bodied or illegal alien

(24:41):
recipients is frankly theft from you. And it goes back
to my point in the last segment. I think it's
im moral too. I think it's absolutely imral. James Madison
wrote that charity is no part of the legislative duty
of government. Oh my god, James Madison, you would be

(25:03):
absolutely canceled saying that today. And then let's think about
the religious aspect. Christians, I think sometimes fall prey to
the Democrat's false generosity gospel. Because Jesus did tell us
to care for the poor. He told his followers to

(25:27):
care for the poor. Jesus tells me. And if you're
a Christian, you believe in Jesus, then he tells you
to care for the poor. Jesus didn't tell the Roman government,
he didn't tell the Roman Empire, he didn't tell any
government to do it. Those churches that preach otherwise might

(25:48):
spend a little less time destroying God's creator, God's created
gender order, and a little more time helping those in
real need. And for those in the left, they're not
just screaming, you know, kind of walling for the Medicaid recipients.
They're screaming. They're actually screaming about how the OBQ budget

(26:10):
will be for state governments. Politico says, by slashing healthcare
and food assistance for low income Americans, Republicans in Washington
are passing tremendous costs onto the states, leaving local leaders
from both parties grasping for ways to make up for
billions and lost federal dollars. Okay, have you ever thought

(26:35):
about why that statement might be true? Because in states
like New York, Politico goes on to admit later in
the article about forty four percent of the state's residents
are enrolled in Medicaid or have state sponsored coverage. Oh so,

(26:57):
no one is gutting the social safety If forty four
percent of the state's population is on the dole. Clearly
that means the net has become a hammock for people
or be cubed. Took only the modesty isn't even the
right word. They took the tiniest steps in just changing

(27:21):
that reality. It's just refocusing and saying, wait a minute,
if you're able, if you're able bodied, then do something.
You know it doesn't even as I said, you don't
have to dig ditches, you don't have to do anything
that involves you can go volunteer, Go volunteer to food bank,

(27:45):
or show that you're actively looking for work, prove that
or is that going to take away from your gaming time.
The other thing is just let me say this about
the states. Telling the states you're going to have to
pick up the tab is the morally right thing to do.

(28:08):
Because if states want to in their locale, in whatever
state you're in, if the people of that state want
to fund medicaid for illegal aliens or for able bodied men,
then you be you and I'll be me, and I'll
find a state that doesn't do that, because that means

(28:31):
there's more of my money to keep in my pocket.
Because states have to balance their budgets, so they're either
going to have to cut or they're going to have
to raise money. And when they raise money, fortunately, in
Colorado we've got tabor what's left of tabor to keep
them from doing it. So, yeah, Colorado, maybe you ought
to figure out a way to oh, install a work

(28:54):
requirement and take illegal aliens off the.

Speaker 7 (28:57):
Doll Oh, Michael, it's their ble of welfare. The poor
person needs one hundred dollars, so the government gives one
of their offices one thousand dollars. Out of that thousand dollars,
they pay somebody one hundred dollars to process four hundred
dollars to a for profit nonprofit organization, who then pays
somebody two hundred dollars and keeps one hundred to supply

(29:20):
one hundred and fifty dollars to a service provider on
behalf of the poor person.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Yeah, you got it. So this may have been covered
while it was gone, But doing my Michael Brown minute,
I discovered this story on KDVR last night, and it's
another example of just how crazy the eighteenth Judicial District
Attorney's office is. Have you heard about they're going to
drop the charges in an attempted kidnapping case? And have
you heard why?

Speaker 9 (29:47):
And we start right now, knew at I be in
a row where parents are calling for transparency and a
plan of action following a terrifying attempted kidnapping happening Friday
at Black Forest Hills Elementary School.

Speaker 10 (29:56):
Yeah, police actually said at some point it appeared the
man tried to grab that young boy before officers arrived
there on the school grounds. Foxley Wanzlia Simms spoke with
the mother of that child today. She joins us all
New at nine.

Speaker 11 (30:08):
Aliah, the mother of an eleven year old boy who
called for help with an alleged kitnapper, grabbed him and
approached three other students, is sharing her anguish.

Speaker 12 (30:18):
They were the ones that fought off this guy, ran
away from him, called stranger danger. If they had not
done that, then I wouldn't have my son with me
at my own home.

Speaker 11 (30:28):
Friday, after fifth grade recess, families of students that black
Forest Hills Elementary School received this phone message.

Speaker 13 (30:35):
And identified adult male entered the field, approached a group
of students, engaged them briefly, and then exited the property.

Speaker 12 (30:43):
That's a shock and then just questions like why did
this happen? How did somebody get into the filled area
of a school and lay hands on my son?

Speaker 11 (30:53):
The message went on to say students were brought in
from recess and district security and police were looking into
the situation.

Speaker 13 (31:00):
Immediately after that. Right it was third grade recess and
they let those kids out ray secure campus should have.

Speaker 4 (31:06):
Been called immediately.

Speaker 13 (31:08):
They didn't do that, and so then they person's still
at large for at least another hour. Right, you're going
almost be to Colorado Springs. At that point, the police.

Speaker 11 (31:16):
Were able to find the suspect, a thirty three year
old man who officers say is a sex offender, which
really terrifies parent.

Speaker 12 (31:23):
I think it's negligent of me to even send him
back to the same place that has no plan to
keep them safe.

Speaker 11 (31:29):
While school officials met with parents Monday morning, they were
not happy with the response.

Speaker 13 (31:34):
We want to meet with Chris Smith, the superintendent. We've
made several requests at this point and pretty much been
told it's not going to happen. We had another abduction
last night. We got an Amberlert on our phone, and
if the things are in place and they see that
there's holes in the armor, predators are going to continue
to do this type of stuff.

Speaker 9 (31:49):
Elie Simm's reporting force there. She says there will be
added supervision at the school this week. That suspect in
court accused him attempt at kidnapping at the school in
a separate case too, This happened Friday, Black Force Tills
Elementary School. We can tell you about that. Investigators say
Solomon and Gallaghan was outside the school property, on property, walking.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
Up to children.

Speaker 9 (32:07):
The lord pool.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
Anyway, there they've got the charges. Seems a little strange
to me.