Kentucky and Medicaid

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/21/opinion/kentucky-medicaid.html

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To the Editor:

Re “Kentucky Adds Work Rule for Recipients of Medicaid” (news article, Jan. 13):

As a Kentuckian barely making ends meet in graduate school, I am troubled by Gov. Matt Bevin’s Medicaid work requirement plan because the evidence suggests that work requirements are ineffective. Selling this sweeping overhaul as a means to lift Kentuckians out of poverty is misleading.

Republicans count the 1996 federal welfare law, which required recipients to work, a success. But earnings during the late 1990s were not enough to lift low-income people above the poverty line.

Work requirements don’t solve the underlying problem, which is that low-income people lack the skills and education to secure a stable job. From 2009 to 2017, 32 Kentucky counties experienced a 10 to 32 percent decline in the number of jobs.

This is another example of the Republican agenda of rejecting health as a citizen’s right and pushing policies that punish our vulnerable.

NAOMI CHARALAMBAKISLOUISVILLE, KY.