Increasingly, it appears that Adam Serwer brought the true word a while back when he summed up this administration*'s domestic policy by writing that the cruelty is the point. The Washington Post went out to Arkansas and to a small, poor place to see how the new fad of attaching work requirements to Medicaid, something that this administration has encouraged, is working out. The cruelty being the point, it seems to be working out just as planned.

This community — scarce on jobs and among the poorest in a poor state — provides an early reality check on how hard it is to carry out President Trump’s vision of a social safety net that requires most able-bodied people to work, or try to work, in exchange for government health benefits. Nearly 10 months ago, Arkansas became the first place in the nation to impose work requirements on the part of Medicaid that expanded under the Affordable Care Act. Seven other states have won the Trump administration’s blessing to begin the same idea soon, and seven more are waiting in line...

The president and Republican governors contend that this abrupt turn in Medicaid, one of the most enduring legacies of the Great Society of the 1960s, will propel poor people to economic self-reliance. In Arkansas, however, 18,000 people so far have lost their insurance, including 85 here in Lee County, state figures show. The view from this Delta town is that confusion about the program is rampant, and people scoff at the idea that jobs are waiting for those willing to work.

It looks as though the federal courts may punt these new rules, but the basic political philosophy behind them—bootstraps for thee, but not for me—is an undying truism in modern conservatism, so the impulse behind perfuming Gilded Age wage-slavery with Eau de Hayek probably will live forever.

Both Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar suggest that the program is helping people become more independent, contending that most of the people who lost benefits have found steady work. But the state lacks data so far to back that up. “What the state is doing is kicking tens of thousands of people off health care, under the guise of an experiment that they aren’t even collecting any data about, let alone analyzing it,” said Kevin De Liban, a Legal Aid lawyer in northeast Arkansas who is active in the federal lawsuit against the program...

Elizabeth Cloinger was tossed off of the Arkansas Works program even though theres no doubt that her income is low enough that she qualifies for it. The Washington Post Getty Images

Elizabeth Cloinger, 47, who lives in a trailer next to her cousin’s house just outside town, thought she was complying with the new rules. She has been on Medicaid for years and already had a job, working seven days most weeks as a home health aide. Her wages — 9.25 an hour, with 50 cents more for hospice patients — and her hours met the new rules. Yet she received a June letter saying she needed to verify that her income made her eligible, or she would be cut off.

She called the listed phone number and faxed information to a state employee in Pine Bluff. She was told that, like many people, she was exempt from the work requirements — in her case, because she was caring for her 20-year-old daughter recovering from a car accident and her 3-year-old granddaughter.

But on Aug. 18, she received another letter, saying she had been terminated because she had not verified her income. In December, four letters arrived saying she needed to update her email address, then 11 more in January. Each letter told her to create an online account. She doesn’t have a computer and didn’t realize that the program requires everyone to get an email address. This winter, she applied to get her insurance back and is still waiting for an answer. Statewide, about 1,900 of the 18,000 people cut off last year have regained coverage since January, when they could reapply. The state does not keep track of how many reapplied and were denied.

Being poor in this country is not only cruel and degrading, it's also been made insanely complicated. All of these qualities are deliberately created hardships courtesy of a political class for whom poverty is barely an issue any more. Poor people are always an issue, though. They're stealing Your Money and spending it on T-bones and Cadillacs. Poor people are convenient scapegoats. It's only poverty that's inconvenient.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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