Don't make the poor work for health care

Trump's next policy push is an ill-considered conservative fixation that will hurt the needy

A woman at home.
(Image credit: 67photo / Alamy Stock Photo)

The Trump administration just won't learn its lesson. Fresh off some of the most detested policymaking in American history, the White House is about to turn to another unpopular conservative obsession: Work requirements.

Republicans have long argued that too many able-bodied adults are getting a free ride from the government. During the Obama years, they took specific issue with the Affordable Care Act's expansion of Medicaid, the government program that provides health coverage to the poor, which they said benefited lots of adults who should have been working in exchange for help. Indeed, since Medicaid is jointly administered by the federal and state governments, states can apply for waivers to impose work requirements on the program. Nine states did, but the Obama administration always turned them down.

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Jeff Spross

Jeff Spross was the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He was previously a reporter at ThinkProgress.