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Tag: Welfare

Orange, Green, and Red – The Colors of Tribalism

BY MIKE MAGEE

As Thanksgiving Day approaches, let’s give thanks for the study of history, in part because it reminds us that Trumpian words like “vermin” have been used before and serve to alert the human race that we have entered danger zone

One President who understood the power of words more than many others was FDR. When he structured up “a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms and regulations…to provide support for farmers, the unemployed, youth and the elderly”, he memorably packaged the plan under the label, “The New Deal.”

Seizing alliteration in 1933, he further defined his new policies as the “3 R’s – Relief, Recovery, Reform”, promising “…action, and action now.”

When his enemies began to coalesce against him in 1936, he chose his words carefully in the public defense. Seizing the largest venue he could find at the time –Madison Square Garden – he stood tall and erect, supported by heavy leg braces, and declared defiantly, “They are unanimous in their hate for me – and I welcome their hatred.”

With a heavy dose of humility and learned wisdom, he rose again eight years later, on January 11, 1944, fifteen months before his death, and delivered the State of the Union Address as a Fireside Chat from the Oval Office in the White House. 

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Medicaid and (supposed) Welfare Dependence

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By HAROLD POLLACK

Jonathan Cohn has a piece on Medicaid yesterday with which I agree. I want to amplify one related point.

National Review and Forbes writer Avik Roy believes that Medicaid is a “humanitarian catastrophe” which is actually worse than no insurance at all. Now Scott Gottlieb has taken up the argument in the Wall Street Journal. I’ve noted before that this is a bad argument. Medicaid should certainly provide better coverage. I’d also like to see the new exchanges provide poor people with better options outside of Medicaid. Yet the claim that people would actually be better off uninsured than they would be with Medicaid—this strains credulity.

I’ve basically said my piece regarding the causal impact of Medicaid in various studies. I want to pick up a different aspect of this debate.

Roy’s response to my initial column includes the following:

Many of the factors Harold raises as flaws of the study are actually flaws of Medicaid. It’s Medicaid that restricts access to the best hospitals and the best doctors and the best treatments. It’s Medicaid, i.e., welfare dependency, that leads to family breakdown and social disrepair. (For those who seek a more extensive discussion of this problem, read Charles Murray’s landmark book, Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980.)

I took umbrage at that, as indicated below. Roy then took umbrage at my umbrage, writing:

One aspect of Harold’s post is wholly unjustified, and a bit of a cheap shot: his assertion that I am “disrespectful” and “disparaging” to welfare recipients, because I’ve highlighted the corrosive effects of welfare dependency (something Harold dismisses as a “bromide”). We’ll never have a constructive debate on Medicaid policy if we can’t get past this kind of nonsense. The entire point of my series of posts on Medicaid is that Medicaid beneficiaries are the victims of an uncaring and bureaucratic system, and also the victims of those who, for ideological reasons, ignore the very real problems that Medicaid has.Continue reading…