Thread by @AlecMacGillis

The harsh, infuriating reality of the new work requirements for Medicaid in Arkansas, where 18,000 people have already lost their coverage. @goldsteinamy: washingtonpost.com/national/healt…

"Elizabeth Cloinger, 47, who lives in a trailer next to her cousin’s house just outside town, thought she was complying with the new rules. She has been on Medicaid for years and already had a job, working seven days most weeks as a home health aide..."

"...Her wages — 9.25 an hour, with 50 cents more for hospice patients — and her hours met the new rules. Yet she received a June letter saying she needed to verify that her income made her eligible, or she would be cut off..."

"She called the listed phone number and faxed information to a state employee in Pine Bluff. She was told that...she was exempt from the work requirements...because she was caring for her 20-year-old daughter recovering from a car accident and her 3-year-old granddaughter."

"But on Aug. 18, she received another letter, saying she had been terminated because she had not verified her income. In December, four letters arrived saying she needed to update her email address, then 11 more in January...."

"...Each letter told her to create an online account. She doesn’t have a computer and didn’t realize that the program requires everyone to get an email address. This winter, she applied to get her insurance back and is still waiting for an answer..."

"In all these months, Cloinger hasn’t seen a doctor for the swelling in her right foot, which makes it hard to stand for long. Nor has she addressed the throbbing around the scar from her hysterectomy two years ago.

'I won’t go' to the doctor, she said..."

"...having just finally paid off—in $10 monthly installments—a hospital bill for the X-rays she needed for a torn tendon before she got onto Medicaid. 'I am just putting it in God’s hands,' Cloinger said. 'He is going to let me stay on this Earth to see my grandbaby be raised.'"

I'm seeing many comments of the "serves 'em right, Arkansas voted for Trump" variety. What this overlooks is that a driving aim of ACA was precisely to extend coverage to poor people in red states w/o political will to do so on their own. SCOTUS Medicaid ruling undermined that.

Also, many of those hurt by Arkansas work requirement are black Hillary voters. Many others didn't vote at all, like so many poor elsewhere. The Trumpish resentment of welfare is mostly slightly higher up income ladder, as I argued here, long before Trump: nytimes.com/2015/11/22/opi…