Georgia recently won a court case in which the Biden administration had—illegally, as it turns out—blocked its program to expand Medicaid eligibility to individuals making up to 100% of the federal poverty line ($13,590 for singles) while conditioning benefits on working, going to school, or volunteering 80 hours a month.
However, under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act of 2020, States are unable to remove able-bodied Medicaid folks—i.e., folks who are fully capable of working but who choose not to—from their Medicaid rolls as long as the Wuhan Virus emergency remains in effect. The CDC conveniently continues to extend that “emergency,” even though no less a light than our Progressive-Democrat President, Joe Biden, has said the emergency is over.
Alternatively, Georgia could remove those folks and the Federal government could withhold hundreds of millions in federal funds. In all, the Federal government mainlines $130 billion in additional Medicaid funds into all the States’ veins.
As The Wall Street Journal‘s editors put it,
The emergency is a Faustian bargain for states….
This is why it’s at best idiotic for any State to take Federal (our taxpayer) money under any circumstance. The dollars don’t come with strings attached; they represent yokes around the States’ necks.