Michael Hiltzik: The GOP's debt ceiling proposal bundles every bad policy idea into one noxious package
The idea of imposing work requirements on Medicaid recipients has a long and distinguished history. Distinguished, that is, by pointlessness and failure.
Health care experts and economists have long argued that work requirements achieve nothing but threatening thousands of people with the loss of their health benefits, don't increase employment, are expensive to administer and are utterly unnecessary.
They're correct on all counts. So of course House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has made the idea a centerpiece of his package of conditions for increasing the federal debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion through next March.
McCarthy dubbed the package, unveiled April 19, the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023 and said it would, among other things, "lift Americans out of poverty."
One can only assume that this is some sort of a gag. The GOP proposal would gut Medicaid and food stamp eligibility for millions of Americans, including 21 million Medicaid enrollees alone, It would turn the clock back
