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There’s No Good Excuse For The Racist Impact Of Michigan’s Medicaid Proposal
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP May 11, 2018 01:47pm |
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| Category | Commentary |
| Author | Arthur Delaney |
| News Date | Friday, May 11, 2018 12:20:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Michigan Republicans are pushing a new, Donald Trump-inspired bill that would require Medicaid recipients in the state’s mostly black cities to work to keep their health benefits, but exempt some of the state’s rural white residents from the same requirement.
Under the bill, Medicaid recipients in 17 mostly white counties, all represented by Republican senators, would be exempt from the work requirements, according to an analysis by the Center for Michigan, a liberal think tank. But Medicaid recipients in the six municipalities with the highest unemployment rates, including Detroit and Flint, would have to work at least 29 hours a week to keep their health benefits. All six cities have black majorities or significant numbers of black residents.
The disparity stems from a provision in the bill that would lift the work requirements in counties with unemployment rates of over 8.5 percent — but not from cities with similar joblessness rates. Since most urban counties in Michigan contain both high-unemployment cities and their richer suburbs, Michigan’s biggest cities would be subject to the work requirements.
Take Detroit. It’s in Wayne County, which had an unemployment rate of 5.4 percent in 2017. But the rate for the city itself was 9.3 percent, well over the 8.5 percent cutoff for counties. That means its majority African-American population would be subject to the Medicaid work requirement, while the mostly white residents of high-joblessness counties in the northern part of the state would not. |
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