Michigan's Medicaid Work Requirement Comes With a Racist Twist

[gollygee]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/michigans-medicaid-work-requirement-comes-with-racist-twist.html

Medicaid work requirements, the shiny new toy for Republican lawmakers across the country, may soon make their way to Michigan. But the proposal that passed the state senate in Lansing last week and is expected to sail through the house in coming days, puts a new, racist twist on the already-bad idea.

The bill, which requires proof of working 30 hours each week to maintain Medicaid coverage, contains an exemption for people residing in counties where unemployment exceeds 8.5 percent. That would leave the largely white residents of rural areas, some of which are represented by the bill’s sponsors, exempt from the onerous new rule. Meanwhile, people living in places such as Detroit and Flint would not get the same exemption despite the unemployment rate in those cities exceeding the same threshold.

Columnist Nancy Kaffer explains in the Detroit Free Press:

[Detriot’s] unemployment rate is higher than 8.5%, but the unemployment rate in surrounding Wayne County is just 5.5% — meaning Detroiters living in poverty, with a dysfunctional transit system that makes it harder to reach good-paying jobs, won’t qualify for that exemption. The same is true in Flint and the state’s other struggling cities.