.@KellyannePolls: Obamacare opened up Medicaid to “many able-bodied Americans who should at least see if there are others options for them.” pic.twitter.com/fzqvuwXrXB
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) June 25, 2017
Kellyanne Conway entered the Trumpcare fray on This Week With George Stephanopoulos when she flatly suggested that any “able-bodied Americans” who were “grandfathered” into Medicaid courtesy of the Affordable Care Act’s roll out should look for work. That way, she argued, those affected by President Donald Trump’s proposed budgetary cuts to the Obamacare-expanded program would be able to secure health insurance coverage instead of relying on the previous president’s targeted healthcare infrastructure.
“If you are currently in Medicaid, if you became a Medicaid recipient during the Obamacare expansion, you were grandfathered in,” Conway told Stephanopoulos. “Obamacare took Medicaid — which was designed to help the poor, the needy, the elderly, the sick, the disabled; also children and pregnant women — it took it and it way above the poverty line. Opened it up to many able-bodied Americans who should probably find other options for them. If they’re able-bodied and they want to work, then they’ll have employer-sponsored benefits like you or I do.”
Stephanopoulos briefly put words into Conway’s mouth by bringing up a hypothetical example of a 15-year-old kid on Medicaid who wouldn’t qualify for most (or any) jobs with insurance coverage. Yet Trump’s counselor didn’t require any help fitting the gangrenous foot of the Senate’s Trumpcare legislation into her mouth. Like when she tried to deny Stephanopoulos’ description of the Medicaid cuts as “cuts.” “We don’t see them as cuts,” she said. “It’s slowing the rate of growth in the future and getting Medicaid back to where it was.” So, “cuts.”
To make matters worse for Conway, CNBC dug into a February 2017 brief by the Kaiser Family Foundation that, among other things, described the majority of Medicaid recipients whose part- or full-time jobs don’t offer health insurance. “Among Medicaid adults (including parents and childless adults — the group targeted by the Medicaid expansion) nearly 8 in 10 live in working families, and a majority are working themselves,” said the report.