By way of background, Medicaid is the federal government's healthcare
entitlement for (supposedly) poor people, while Medicare is the entitlement
for old people. And, as part of Obamacare, the eligibility rules for
Medicaid were dramatically weakened.
But the new research cited above shows that if you give people "free" health
care, that makes them less likely to work.
Particularly when you combine that freebie with food stamps, housing
subsidies, welfare, and other handouts.
That's obviously bad news for taxpayers, who bear the direct cost of a
bloated welfare state.
But it's also bad for the less fortunate. They get trapped in a web of
dependency, both because handouts reduce the incentive to work (humorously
depicted here and here), band also because they face very high implicit
marginal tax rates if they actually try to escape government dependency.
But Obama and other leftists probably see this as a feature, not a bug.
"After all, those who are lured into being dependent on government
presumably have an incentive to vote for those who give them the most
goodies. "
Leftist redistribution polices create perverse incentives for people to not
be productive.
"Even when they have the potential to become productive members of society,the loss of welfare state benefits if they try to do so is an implicit "tax"on what they would earn that often exceeds the explicit tax on amillionaire. If increasing your income by $10,000 would cause you to lose$15,000 in government benefits, would you do it? In short, the politicalleft's welfare state makes poverty more comfortable, while penalizingattempts to rise out of poverty."
-Thomas Sowell
"The weaker the economy is, the stronger the Democrats will be becausepeople will be more dependent on government. People don't need dependency,they need freedom. The Democrats cripple you and then give you freecrutches."
-Peter Schiff, 02172014
By Epictetus
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