The ethos behind Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement blames individual people for their chronic diseases—particularly by associating health conditions with choices like vaccination—and links Medicaid users’ value to their economic productivity, as when Trump’s Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins, said in early July that able-bodied people on Medicaid should replace deported migrant farm workers.
There are multiple ways disabled people could lose Medicaid coverage when work requirements hit, says David Machledt, a senior policy analyst with the nonprofit National Health Law Program. “Sometimes, it may be the definition being too narrow to capture people who have real barriers to employment,” he said. “There’s also just as likely going to be bumps from and coverage loss that comes…when the state sets up a verification regime.”
A person with debilitating chronic pain, or a serious autoimmune illness, may appear “able-bodied” by the standards RFK Jr. appears poised to implement—even as they face hurdles in qualifying for Social Security disability due to not being considered disabled enough. HHS declined to answer a series of questions for this article, instead offering a general statement that the agency “remains committed to protecting and strengthening Medicaid for those who rely on it…while eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.”
“It’s completely counterintuitive to not allow people to have health care until they’re at a point where they can ‘prove it,’” Justice in Aging attorney Gelila Selassie told me. “At that point, they’re definitely not going to be able to work, and then, more importantly, they don’t have access to health care.”
