New Orleans KABF is in a special election partnership with the Associated Press this year, which meant that I didn’t just get the terrible news about attacks on Medicaid recipients in Arkansas in the usual ways, along with the racist dogpile that followed the ad, but got a special note from our AP liaison to make sure we didn’t miss the story. This story was so horrid and despicable, that I’m not sure we could have missed it with a ten-foot pole!
Governor and potential longshot aspirant for the presidency, Sarah Huckabee Sanders ran a gratuitous ad trying to paint Medicaid recipients as lay about scofflaws undeserving of health care. They used an actor to portray a lazy, gamer stuffing his face, rather than out there working, even as he was potentially receiving Medicaid, based on his income or disability. For my money, all that is bad enough. Even without the imposition of work, education, training, or volunteer activity being required this January because of Trump’s Bad Budget Bill, why punch someone when they are down, especially since the vast majority of recipients are working, but are within 138% of the poverty level for qualify under the Obamacare Medicaid expansion.
Huckabee didn’t get an “atta-girl” from many of the commentators on the right, as she undoubtedly had hope with this cheap shot. No, she got a bunch of blowbacks over the fact that she was showing a white man, rather than, as one argued, “Shaniqua.” These wingers wanted to make sure that these attacks were race forward. They wanted the whole shebang to be a reenactment of Reagan’s welfare queen trope, which was wrong then, and wrong now.
The AP story does its best to punch holes in their balloon noting that,
Created in 1965 as a joint federal and state health insurance program, Medicaid offers free or low-cost medical coverage to people with limited income including the elderly, children, or adults with disabilities who cannot work. Nearly 66 million people were enrolled in Medicaid as of June, according to the Medicaid.gov website. Over 38% of beneficiaries between the ages of 0-64 are White, according to 2024 data from research organization KFF. Nearly 19% are Black.
That’s not to say that Governor Sanders and her people are clean on this, because they went White. Oh, no, they are trying to do Trump one worse,
In July, Sanders soft-launched mandating that healthy people ages 19 to 64 find work, volunteer or attend school at least 80 hours per month to stay in the Arkansas Health and Opportunity for Me Medicaid program, or ARHOME. Robert Coon, managing partner at Impact Management Group, a political consulting and public-opinion firm with an Arkansas office, said that welfare work requirement policy is generally favored in Arkansas. But suggestions the person in the ad should be Black are ” overtly racist” and “inaccurate,” Coon said. About 60% of ARHOME recipients are White and around 18% are Black, according to recent data from the state Department of Human Services.
Some things don’t change. In the conservative playbook, it’s still ok to play politics with the poor and engage in race bating and signally, no matter the facts of the matter. Needless to say, Sanders staff defended the ad. Just another day in the mud.
What does it take to change this?