1. United States
2. N.D.
3. Letter

I'm writing to you because I'm alarmed at the recent Republican propositions surrounding Medicaid. From NBC News today, May 12th: "The bill would make a slew of Medicaid spending reductions through policies such as stricter eligibility verification, citizenship checks, tougher screenings on providers who get reimbursements and federal Medicaid funding cuts to states that offer coverage to residents living in the U.S. illegally. The bill also seeks to impose work requirements to receive Medicaid for able-bodied adults aged 19 to 64 without dependents, demanding they work at least 80 hours — or perform 80 hours of community service or other programs — per month." Most of the people who are on Medicaid still do work. However, a significant number cannot work - which is why they need Medicaid in the first place. My mentally disabled brother, now dead, was one of them. If he'd been required to work 80 hours per month, he would simply have lost the coverage as no one would have hired him and no volunteer group could have used him. If you assert that people who can't work shouldn't get assistance unless they work, you are simply disqualifying them from assistance and no one will be fooled. Likewise no one will be fooled by stricter eligibility verification, citizenship checks (both obviously designed to shut out elderly Blacks in my opinion), or tougher screenings on providers - a measure designed to discourage providers from accepting Medicaid patients at all. Calling cuts to the program something else does not turn them into them something else.