Don't social welfare programs like Medicaid make people want to stay poor and live off the government?

[Tea Party Hero]

Medicaid is basically Medicare for poor people. Once the poor get a taste of the handouts, they aren't gonna want to work any harder or else they lose their handouts! This was the problem with the USSR, no incentive for their people to work!

This is the same with Social Welfare for the poor. Time to get rid of it ALL!

[Progress]

Sure. When confronted with a job that pays $70k, a person would much prefer to just stay poor and on Medicaid.

50% of people on welfare work. I guess they’re the stupid ones, eh? I mean, why work at all when you can get a check for $800/month, right?

[Tanisha]

So in the US avoiding death, disease and debt is the motivation needed to make the poor work. All stick and no carrot.

[Kati]

No, not really. While there will always be those who simply won't work or are incapable of working, the main reason why people on public assistance stay on public assistance is because the way benefits are scaled back when they start making money means that there is a time where they don't make enough to support themselves without assistance and they don't have the assistance anymore. Take my good friend, who I will call Sue, Sue lost her job because her sick child made her call off too much and her husband took off when he realized that the baby wouldn't be normal. Now, Sue is on public aid. Sue gets a part time job working for minimum wage as the first job she can get after being off work for a few years. She ended up working 15 hours a week for $7.20 an hour, which led to her making about $432 a month. She was recieving, I believe, something like $1000 a month in food stamps for her and her children. They cut it by $375, which was reasonable because she was making more than what they cut it by...except that they also cut the money she was using to pay her rent by about the same amount. Now, she lost $750 and had to make up the difference with only $432 a month and couldn't do it. She was facing uncomfortable choices of feeding her kids or putting gas in her car to go to work, so she quit her job and went back on public aid and there she stayed until she went back to school and could get a better job. She wasn't on the dole because she wanted to be, she was on the dole because the system didn't work in her case.

[Judge Andrew]

That's why the Progressives hand it out so easily.

[Phil]

well the way it is administered it does,they claimed it was to help the poor,but it has enslaved many,they abuse the system and democrats have a solid voting base

[Justin]

there is no other way to really go into it besides YES! If someone can't see that then they are either blind to what is going on around them...or they are actually incapable of thought and then truly deserving of Medicaid.

[Kenneth]

My 20+ years as a welfare eligibility worker says, Yes, to those getting used to a free ride.
That USSR story is a different issue.
~ ~ ~

Myth: Most welfare recipients are on benefits a short time.
Let me make that clearer.
At any one time 80% of any given caseload is chronic, repeat for one or more lifetimes.
80% of the money being spent at any one moment in time, is for the chronic, constantly needy, needy by choice, more than circumstances.
The other 20% comes and goes on a regular basis, in one door, out the other, never to be seen again.
At any moment in time, only 20% of the total, but over a long stretch (say five years), most of the ones helped were short timers, came and went, just like the myth says, most of the recipients on a short time,. . . . . . . but they only use 20% of the total funds available.
80% of the financial help available, goes to those ‘few bad apples.’
That does not sound like a good taxpayer investment to me.
It seems to me the lion share of the money should be spent on the temporarily poor, the poor by circumstances, more than choice.
http://www.urban.org/publications/900288…

~ ~ ~ ~
The 60 month time limits for TANF (cash assistance) is all smoke and mirrors - not real.
First of all almost half of all TANF cases have NO adult head of household, so NO time limits for them.

If the mother is mentally disabled, gets SSI, she is not on the grant - not a "TANF household member".

If the mother is a drug addict, she may have turned the children over to a grandparent or aunt, so that adult is not on the TANF grant.

~
Next, the 60 month TANF counter is not running if the TANF head of household is considered temporarily disabled - like a difficult pregnancy. This is very common. Women who work and become pregnant continue to work. Women who are on welfare and become pregnant get a doctor statement saying they can't work.
Post partum 12 week work exemption is automatic, no doctor statement. needed.
So for every pregnancy, 8 months pregnancy no counter, and 3 months post partum no counter, so 11 months of TANF, does not count toward the 60 month limit.


~ ~
If you are overweight, or have other health issues, yuou may try to get SSI - for people who never worked. If your family doctor says you are disabled, and you pursue SSI, you are not work capable, no TANFcouner running. It is not uncommon for 'disable' TANF parents to pursue SSI for 5 years, before finally giving up. so the five year limit got another five years added on.

~ ~ ~
So now you are probably thinking 'Gee, all these people must be on TANF (cash assistance), getting the free ride.'
WRONG!
There are so many other welfare programs, they don't need TANF.
A lot of them DO NOT WANT to inconvenience the absent parent(s) by filing for child support.
On my caseload of 400 I have dozens that would be eligible for TANF, that don't even apply.

Food stamps, WIC, energy assistance, housing assistance they are doing just fine without TANF.

~ ~ ~
Today’s antipoverty safety net is dramatically different from the one in place two decades ago when welfare reform was enacted. Rather than a safety net primarily dependent on cash assistance programs, as is the common perception, the current system is highly reliant on social service programs funded by government and delivered through community-based nonprofits. Annual public and private expenditures for social service programs today exceed total federal outlays for cash assistance programs like welfare, food stamps, and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).|
http://ed.stanford.edu/events/out-reach-…

Cash Welfare Caseload. In December 2010, the number of families receiving TANF cash welfare was 1.9 million families, consisting of 4.7 million recipients, of which 3.5 million were children. The cash welfare caseload is very heterogeneous. The type of family historically thought of as the “typical” cash welfare family—one with an unemployed adult recipient—accounted for less than half of all families on the rolls in FY2008. Additionally, 15% of cash welfare families had an employed adult, while almost half of all families had no adult recipient. Child-only families include those with disabled adults receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI), adults who are nonparents (e.g., grandparents, aunts, uncles) caring for children, and families consisting of citizen children and ineligible noncitizen parents.
http://www.nationalaglawcenter.org/asset…

[Ann]

It is always easy to take something you did not work for. And if you grew up with it you believe you deserve it also.

My kids will never know someone else paying for our food or healthcare. That is because we discuss having a job. We discuss what you can afford with certain jobs. We discuss what kind of skills they need to afford a certain lifestyle.

If parents complain that their application for Medicaid is taking a long time or that WIC doesn't give enough formula, kids assume that is how it works. They assume you don't buy groceries until the food stamp money comes in. Then the house is full of food. When food runs short, it is because the mean government isn't giving enough for food. Not because mom and dad had them before they could work. And EBT looks just like a credit card. So, little kids assume everyone has one.

Kids learn what they live.

[flower]

Many people work and still get Medicaid because they dont earn enough to buy insurance.