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6 Truths About Medicaid Work Requirements the GOP Doesn’t Want You to Share
Republicans are spouting lies about a work requirement for Medicaid because they’re really trying to push eligible people off it—to help finance their big tax cut mainly for the rich.
May 29, 2025
One of my purposes in sending you this daily letter is to give you the truth about an important issue that U.S. President Donald Trump and his lapdogs in Congress are demagoguing—so you can spread the truth.
Right now, the Senate is taking up Trump’s “Big Beautiful budget bill” (really a Big Bad Ugly Bill) that just emerged from the House.
If enacted, it would be the largest redistribution of income in the nation’s history—from the poor and working class to the rich and super-rich.
The entire work requirement would affect 7% at most. In reality, a work requirement would cause many more who are eligible to lose their Medicaid coverage. The current estimate is at least 8.6 million people.
How? The tax cut mainly benefits the wealthy. A major source of funding is at least $715 billion of cuts in healthcare spending, mostly from Medicaid.
It also contains a poison pill that would remove the power of federal courts to hold officials in contempt of court—fining or imprisoning them if they fail to follow court orders. As the courts push back against Trump, this is a critical power.
The bill cuts Medicaid spending by requiring Medicaid recipients to work.
Republicans are spreading lies about this work requirement.
Here are the facts you need to know—and share:
1. 64% of adult Medicaid recipients already work.
Many recipients work in jobs that don’t typically offer health insurance and pay little—which makes Medicaid vital. These people aren’t freeloaders mooching off the system, as Republicans claim. They’re barely scraping by.
2. Adults on Medicaid who aren’t working have good reasons not to.
- 12% are primary caregivers.
- 10% have an illness or disability.
- 7 % are attending school.
3. So, 93% of all Medicaid recipients either already working or having good reason not to.
The entire work requirement would affect 7% at most. In reality, a work requirement would cause many more who are eligible to lose their Medicaid coverage. The current estimate is at least 8.6 million people.
4. The work requirement kicks eligible people Medicaid because of its burdensome and confusing reporting requirements.
It’s not really meant to put people to work. It’s a shady way of kicking people off Medicaid to fund tax cuts mainly for the wealthy.
In Arkansas, which tried a work requirement for Medicaid, more than 18,000 people who were eligible lost coverage mainly because of the paperwork reporting hoops they had to jump through.
5. When Arkansas enacted work requirements, there was no significant change in employment rates.
Because, again, Medicaid recipients already have high rates of employment to begin with.
6. If Republicans really want to put people to work, they’d make it easier to get Medicaid—not harder.
After Ohio expanded Medicaid, enrollees had an easier time finding and holding down a job.
Access to healthcare means people can manage chronic conditions, afford medication, or receive mental health treatment—all of which helps people keep their jobs.
Republicans are spouting lies about a work requirement for Medicaid because they’re really trying to push eligible people off it—to help finance their big tax cut mainly for the rich.
Senate Republicans can afford to lose only three Republican votes. Otherwise, the Big Bad Ugly Bill is dead. Please share these facts.
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Senate Republicans Bypass Filibuster to Advance 'Brazenly Corrupt Handout to Big Polluters'
"Senate Republicans have now set the stage to potentially do the same thing in service of adding nongermane, devastating policy provisions to their horrific reconciliation bill," one watchdog warned.
May 22, 2025
Senate Republicans late Wednesday made use of arcane procedural maneuvers to bypass the chamber's 60-vote filibuster and move ahead with a measure to overturn federal waivers that allowed California to set tougher vehicle pollution standards.
The 51-46 party-line vote came after the Senate parliamentarian, the unelected arbiter of the chamber's procedures, said that the Environmental Protection Agency waivers issued at the tail-end of the Biden administration did not qualify as federal rules for the purpose of the Congressional Review Act (CRA).
The CRA gives lawmakers a limited window to overturn federal rules, and resolutions brought under the law are not subject to the Senate filibuster. The Republican-controlled House voted earlier this month to repeal the California waivers with a CRA resolution, paving the way for Senate action.
On Wednesday, Senate Republicans engaged in a procedural gambit that allowed them to skirt the filibuster while claiming they did not vote to overrule the parliamentarian. As The New York Timesexplained, Republicans "argued that the situation was 'novel'... allowing the Senate to establish its own course of action since no exact precedents existed."
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the progressive watchdog group Public Citizen, warned in a statement that the GOP move sets a dangerous precedent, potentially laying the groundwork for Republicans to bypass parliamentarian rulings on provisions of the sprawling reconciliation package that the House passed Thursday morning.
"Tonight they voted to disregard clear legal requirements in their own statutes and rulebook, jettison the judgment of the Senate's referees, and sow long-term chaos so they could pass a brazenly corrupt handout to Big Polluters," said Gilbert. "It's outrageous, dangerous, and reckless in the extreme."
"Senate Republicans have now set the stage to potentially do the same thing in service of adding nongermane, devastating policy provisions to their horrific reconciliation bill of tax handouts for the wealthy and cuts to our social safety net," Gilbert added.
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New Projected Cost of Trump-GOP Tax Cuts for the Rich: 'Staggering' $7 Trillion
"What Republicans are trying to jam through Congress right now is a level of economic recklessness we’ve never seen before," said a group of Democratic lawmakers.
Apr 04, 2025
A new analysis indicates Republicans' plan to extend soon-to-expire provisions of their party's 2017 tax law, as well as their push to tack on additional tax breaks largely benefiting the rich and big corporations, would cost $7 trillion over the next decade, a figure that a group of congressional Democrats called "staggering."
The analysis from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), published on Thursday, updates previous estimates that suggested the GOP effort to extend expiring provisions of the 2017 law would cost $4.6 trillion over a 10-year period. The new assessment shows that extending the law's temporary provisions—which disproportionately favored the wealthy—would cost $5.5 trillion over the next decade.
The projected cost of the GOP agenda balloons to $7 trillion after adding Senate Republicans' call for $1.5 trillion in additional tax cuts in the budget resolution they advanced in a party-line vote on Thursday. The GOP has come under fire for using an accounting trick to claim their proposed tax cuts would have no budgetary impact.
"The Republican handouts to billionaires and corporations will come at a staggering cost, and it's unconscionable that their plan to pay for those handouts includes kicking millions of Americans off their health insurance, hiking the cost of living with tariffs, and driving up child hunger," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), and Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) said in a joint statement issued in response to the JCT figures.
"Even after making painful cuts that will inflict hardship on typical American families, Republicans will still risk sending us into a catastrophic debt spiral that does permanent harm to our economy," the Democrats added. "What Republicans are trying to jam through Congress right now is a level of economic recklessness we've never seen before."
The JCT's updated cost analysis came as President Donald Trump plowed ahead with what's been characterized as the biggest tax hike in U.S. history, one that will hit working-class Americans in the form of price increases on household staples and other goods.
Trump administration officials, not known for providing reliable numbers, have claimed the president's sweeping new tariffs could produce roughly $6 trillion in federal revenue over the next decade. The Trump tariffs have sent financial markets into a tailspin, heightened recession fears, and prompted swift retaliation from targeted nations, including China.
In an appearance on MSNBC on Thursday, Boyle—the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee—said Trump's tariffs represent "the single largest tax increase in American history."
"It's a tax that everyone will pay in this country, based on the goods that they buy," said Boyle. "However, it's also a tax that is highly regressive—the poorest amongst us will end up paying a higher percentage of their income."
A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the analysis was conducted by the Congressional Budget Office. It was conducted by the Joint Committee on Taxation.
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