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As U.S. jobless claims skyrocket amid #COVID19, thousands of unemployed Floridians have been unable to access benefits due to a broken claims system.
But the system's working just as state GOP leaders intended.
And Florida's just the tip of the iceberg.
(AN OP-ED & A THREAD):
But the system's working just as state GOP leaders intended.
And Florida's just the tip of the iceberg.
(AN OP-ED & A THREAD):
First, the op-ed (h/t @ericmgarcia for the great edit): https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/15/republicans-harder-access-safety-net/
“It’s a sh-- sandwich, and it was designed that way by @SenRickScott.”
Per an adviser to FL @GovRonDeSantis, Florida's UI system was deliberately designed to “make it harder for people to get benefits so the numbers were low to give the governor something to brag about.”
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Per an adviser to FL @GovRonDeSantis, Florida's UI system was deliberately designed to “make it harder for people to get benefits so the numbers were low to give the governor something to brag about.”
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What’s playing out in Florida right now is pretty clearly criminal. Even the chair of the FL Republican Party has said “someone should go to jail over [it].”
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But while Florida Republicans appear to have gone to extraordinary lengths to block workers from accessing benefits, in many ways, the result is the logical conclusion of a nefarious playbook that GOP lawmakers have been using for years to weaken critical programs.
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It’s called “bureaucratic disentitlement”—the intentional use of red tape, byzantine application systems even lawyers have trouble navigating, onerous paperwork requirements, & systematic underfunding to shrink vital programs by making benefits as hard to access as possible.
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A big part of what makes bureaucratic disentitlement so nefarious is that it doesn’t just lead to fewer people getting benefits—it prevents lots of *eligible* people from getting help too.
This, of course, is a feature, not a bug.
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This, of course, is a feature, not a bug.
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I witnessed the cruel effects of these kinds of backdoor cuts in the lives of hundreds of low-income people during my time as a legal aid lawyer representing people wrongly denied or cut off from life-sustaining benefits, like SNAP, Medicaid, and disability benefits.
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Pills get cut in half until prescriptions run out altogether.
Parents skip meals so the kids can eat.
People end up on the street.
And for people with serious health conditions, the consequences can be deadly.
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Parents skip meals so the kids can eat.
People end up on the street.
And for people with serious health conditions, the consequences can be deadly.
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cw: death
My first year in legal aid, one of my clients—a man in his 40s w/serious mental illness & no health insurance—died after yrs of being wrongfully denied SSI & Medicaid because he couldn’t make it all the way through the byzantine eligibility determination process.
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My first year in legal aid, one of my clients—a man in his 40s w/serious mental illness & no health insurance—died after yrs of being wrongfully denied SSI & Medicaid because he couldn’t make it all the way through the byzantine eligibility determination process.
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My supervisor, a seasoned public benefits lawyer, helped me through what was an incredibly traumatic experience for a young advocate, explaining grimly that this kind of thing happened somewhat regularly among legal aid clients.
I'll never forget that conversation.
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I'll never forget that conversation.
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Now, with unemployment soaring & states facing unprecedented spikes in applications for aid—the costs of bureaucratic disentitlement are on full display.
And many are finally realizing making it really hard to access vital assistance may not have been so smart after all.
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And many are finally realizing making it really hard to access vital assistance may not have been so smart after all.
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Unfortunately, Florida is just the tip of the iceberg. Many state UI systems are in pitiful shape, due to outdated technology, years of federal neglect, and deprivation of needed admin $$ when unemployment was low—often in conjunction with short-sighted business tax cuts.
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In the case of Florida: Rick Scott’s “ultimate goal” was a massive $2.3 billion cut to the unemployment taxes paid by Florida businesses.
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Now states across the U.S. are reporting system crashes due to overload—and jobless workers are reporting they’ve had to call state 1-800 numbers literally hundreds of times before they get through.
Many aren’t getting through at all.
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Many aren’t getting through at all.
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And it’s not just UI.
Long before #COVID19, GOP lawmakers—including President Trump—have spent years weaponizing bureaucracy to strangle critical programs like SNAP and Medicaid with red tape.
The centerpiece of that agenda: onerous work reporting requirements.
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Long before #COVID19, GOP lawmakers—including President Trump—have spent years weaponizing bureaucracy to strangle critical programs like SNAP and Medicaid with red tape.
The centerpiece of that agenda: onerous work reporting requirements.
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The implicit premise is, of course, that poverty stems from “unwillingness to work”—rather than structural barriers like poverty wages; the sharp edges of the low-wage labor market; or barriers to work such as caregiving, disability/illness, or a criminal record.
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While work reporting requirements don't address employment barriers or make jobs appear out of thin air, they are a highly effective tool for rapidly shrinking aid programs.
Take Arkansas, the first state to implement Trump’s new Medicaid work reporting requirements.
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Take Arkansas, the first state to implement Trump’s new Medicaid work reporting requirements.
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By Sept. 2019, just 7 months after Arkansas's Medicaid work reporting requirements took effect, a staggering 18,000 people had already lost Medicaid coverage, many despite still being eligible.
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A major culprit: an online reporting system that was only open limited hours.
It’s hard not to interpret these kinds of design choices as intentional.
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It’s hard not to interpret these kinds of design choices as intentional.
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Paperwork aside, as work reporting requirements sensibly get halted pending #COVID19, one of the most important takeaways from the current moment should be the cruelty of tying something as essential as health insurance or food to employment in the first place.
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Meanwhile, in addition to driving up health insurance losses heading into the #Covid19 pandemic, Trump's Medicaid paperwork requirements have left countless people in limbo in states that have taken them up—uninsured and battling an overstretched system to access Medicaid.
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Take Judith, a 64-year-old South Carolina resident living with multiple chronic health conditions. Her Medicaid coverage was summarily terminated earlier this year—just 1 month after she was found eligible—right as SC’s Medicaid work reporting requirements went into effect.
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She filed an appeal but has been unable to get it processed because SC’s Medicaid system is overwhelmed. Now she’s left waiting—unable to afford her meds, high-risk for #covid19 & terrified of getting sick—because she’s riding out the quarantine without health insurance.
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“Medicaid is stalling in hopes I catch the virus,” she told @propublica in a dose of gallows humor.
https://www.propublica.org/article/medicaid-abruptly-canceled-her-health-insurance-then-came-the-coronavirus /24
https://www.propublica.org/article/medicaid-abruptly-canceled-her-health-insurance-then-came-the-coronavirus /24
Even now, after 25,000 deaths from coronavirus, Trump is weaponizing bureaucracy to block access to the Affordable Care Act -- refusing to reopen the marketplace to allow the 28 million people who were uninsured heading into #Covid19 to enroll in ACA coverage.
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In the case of SNAP—the nation’s largest food assistance program—Trump has spent the better part of 2 years advancing a set of controversial regulations that, prior to the pandemic, were on track to strip 3.7 million people of food assistance through red tape and paperwork.
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Some of these cruel policies have done long-term damage. For ex., #Covid19 has shined a long-overdue light on how asset limits—which bar recipients of certain types of aid from having even a few thousand dollars in the bank—have come to function as a “deadly poverty trap.”
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h/t @Azza_Alt: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/disability/news/2020/04/07/482736/deadly-poverty-trap-asset-limits-time-coronavirus
Adding insult to injury, these types of access barriers generally come with a hefty price tag because they’re difficult to administer—meaning their proponents are willing to spend significant sums to keep people from getting needed benefits.
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Case in point: Trump's proposed rule to increase the frequency of "continuing disability reviews" in SSI & SSDI made clear his admin is willing to spend nearly $2 billion to take $2.6 billion in life-sustaining benefits away from hundreds of thousands of disabled people.
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In “normal” times, when it’s disproportionately low-wage workers, people with disabilities, and other marginalized groups wrongfully denied or running themselves ragged trying to access critical benefits, few who aren’t personally impacted notice or care.
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But now that it’s got so much of the nation’s attention—and so many people have seen the human costs of bureaucratic disentitlement firsthand—it’s time we named the need for a shift.
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We’ve allowed the Reagan-era mythology—that safety net programs are a budget problem to be shrunk—to define the narrative on critical public programs for far too long.
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Under no reasonably humane logic model should an assistance program’s “success” be measured by how many people it keeps from getting needed help.
That would be like measuring a lifeboat’s effectiveness by how well it keeps drowning people from climbing in.
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That would be like measuring a lifeboat’s effectiveness by how well it keeps drowning people from climbing in.
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How incredibly few of our elected officials have lived experience of economic insecurity has no doubt played a big part.
Just as we’ve seen a growing number of GOP elected officials proudly announce in recent days that they’re willing to “die for the economy" …
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Just as we’ve seen a growing number of GOP elected officials proudly announce in recent days that they’re willing to “die for the economy" …
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… knowing full well they’re actually sacrificing other people’s lives—and based on the data coming in, disproportionately low-income black and disabled lives …
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…the disinvestment & dismantlement of critical programs that provide food, income assistance & health care has probably felt like something they could “safely” do—and, hell, use to pay for corporate tax cuts—without putting their or their loved ones’ wellbeing on the line.
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Now, similar to how public health experts have underscored that we’re all in this together when it comes to addressing the #Covid19 pandemic, this moment offers a long-overdue opportunity to finally retire the “us and them” mythology on the safety net.
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Years before coronavirus, longitudinal research found that a staggering 4 in 5 Americans—nearly all of us—would experience poverty, unemployment, or need to turn to the safety net—for at least a year—at some point during their working years.
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Instead of a budget problem to be shrunk, it’s time to start understanding public assistance as a public investment we’ve put in place to protect all of us—and that it’s in all of our interest to make sure it’s up to the task in times of need.
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To anyone reading and thinking yeah, but not *me*…
This holds true even for people who never personally receive aid, because of the broader macroeconomic benefits—as well as the significant public health benefits—of investing in a strong safety net.
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This holds true even for people who never personally receive aid, because of the broader macroeconomic benefits—as well as the significant public health benefits—of investing in a strong safety net.
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Even the conservative @FinancialTimes editorial board now acknowledges that moving forward, we ought to view public assistance programs as “investments” required to “forge a society that works for all.”
https://www.ft.com/content/7eff769a-74dd-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca /41
https://www.ft.com/content/7eff769a-74dd-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca /41
For now, most eyes are -- as they should be -- on containing the spread of the virus, helping workers and families weather the crisis financially, getting aid to states, and minimizing the depth of the coming recession through as much economic stimulus as possible.
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But as we think longer term about the lessons we can’t afford *not* to learn in this moment, high on the list should be the need to rebuild, reinvest in, and revalue our bedrock public programs that help workers & families maintain a basic standard of living in times of need.
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So when we find ourselves, our neighbors, or our loved ones -- let alone huge swaths of our country -- unexpectedly facing what Franklin D. Roosevelt famously called the “hazards and vicissitudes of life,” we have something better to fall back on than a “sh-- sandwich.”
/fin
/fin
