Myth:
ALL poor people are bad and illegal immigrants are double bad (lol) because they ARE POOR PEOPLE who use Medicaid and other low income services without paying for them.
Trump Policy:
The Trump administration introduced a new rule on Monday making it harder for low-income immigrants who receive food stamps or other forms of taxpayer-funded assistance to stay in the country legally.
The rule would require immigrants applying for a change in immigration status (like a green card) or those seeking to come here to prove that they are unlikely to ever need public assistance, and can bar immigrants who had received assistance above a certain threshold from being approved.
In other words, we dont want "deadbeats" becoming citizens.
Reality:
Use an recent real world example FROM MISSISSIPPI to address the myth:
"680 undocumented workers arrested in record-setting immigration sweep on the first day of school" This was in Miss. It is the chicken plant raid
Guess would be everyone of those "undocumented" workers is using a Social Security number (the were multiple US Labor disputes at the plant lol) so they are PAYING payroll taxes (i.e., paying for medicaid. Mississippi received $3 from the Feds for every dollar spent on medicaid.)
Here's an article FROM MISSISSIPPI discussing Medicaid.
Medicaid is NOT rife with BENEFICIARY fraud, BUT it does have a problem with provider fraud (i.e., corporations, just like the chicken plant was taking advantage of illegals)
Note the reference to the providers and that the legislature still focus on the recipients because of the belief poor= bad
"Rep. Jarvis Dortch, D-Raymond, said he feels Medicaid beneficiaries are often cast in a negative light. Some of that, he believes, is “race related.”
“There’s that old saying about black women showing up in a Cadillac with their Medicaid card,” Dortch said. “That came out of nowhere, this myth about Medicaid.”
This year legislators passed House Bill 1090, known as the Medicaid and Human Services Transparency and Fraud Prevention Act. The new law focuses on fraud by Medicaid beneficiaries, despite there being no available statistics on Medicaid fraud by beneficiaries.
In fact, Dzielak told The Clarion-Ledger Editorial Board in April, after the bill had passed, that the majority of the fraud occurs on the provider side. In the 2016 fiscal year, the Office of Program Integrity recouped more than $4.5 million in funds from providers."
Here's who is actually using Miss Medicaid:
"Each morning, Samantha Manning rushes to get her family ready for the day. Her eldest, 13-year-old Kennedy, is involved in a number of sports. Combine that with twin 8-year-old boys, and each day is different.
Kennedy is a type 1 diabetic and goes to a small school that doesn’t have a nurse on staff. Because of the teen’s diabetes, the school’s policy demands one parent is present at all of her games.
“I work part time because she does have diabetes, and they don’t have enough trained staff to take care of her three hours away from home at a softball game in Louisiana,” said Manning, a nurse. “I want her to still be able to be a normal kid.”
Like 78 percent of Medicaid beneficiaries nationally, Kennedy is in a family with at least one member who works. In addition to Manning's part-time employment, her husband works full time. "
TRUMP LIVES IN AN ALTERNATE, UNINFORMED ALT-RIGHT UNIVERSE AND YOU CAN SEE ACTUALLY POLICY DRIVEN BY the mythology of that world.
Most (not all) illegal immigrants are paying there way (and more) and are actually helping guys like the white Republican chicken billionaire make billions. . . but there's no convincing some of that. This proposed policy plays to that misinformed point of view
