Yes, Medicaid Policies Are Terrible

MIT professor Andrea Louise Campbell writes an essay for Vox describing how Medicaid forces people with disabilities to live in poverty in order to receive health coverage. She focuses on California’s Medicaid system (Medi-Cal), which she was forced to examine after her sister-in-law became a quadriplegic in an automobile accident. Many of her criticisms of the program, such as the harshness of the income and asset limits, won’t come as a surprise to those familiar with Medicaid policy.

In fact, Campbell’s outrage strikes me as naïve for a professor who teaches social welfare policy and her critique carries a worrisome undertone of middle-class entitlement. Disability advocates have long made the argument that Medicaid eligibility criteria traps people with disabilities in poverty, but Campbell only acknowledges this in passing. At one point in her essay, Campbell describes how a relative bought formula for the couple’s newborn baby and she writes, “I wondered what people who don’t have middle-class relatives do in a situation like this.” It’s really not that difficult to imagine the deprivations that people with disabilities without middle-class family members must endure, but Campbell seems shocked that this kind of thing goes on in America.

I get that most Vox readers don’t give much thought to disability policy and the article is meant to illustrate how such policy affects real families. But if Vox plans on exploring this topic further, it might be a good idea to get insights from the actual people with disabilities who live with the consequences of these policies on a daily basis.