The American Health Care Act is only 122 pages long. It’s so short that White House spokesman Sean Spicer gave us yet another meme when he [compared two stacks of paper][popsugar] to show how lean it was.
Clearly, this is a tight and focused document. No cruft, no useless bureaucratic nonsense.
Except for the [six pages][usnews] about lottery winners and whether they are eligible for Medicaid.
No, really. You can download the [full thing][bit] and check it out for yourself.
This bill is bad news for nearly everyone but the very rich. So why does the lottery winner section bother me so much?
I think it’s because it so clearly shows the Republican animus towards the poor. It’s another chapter in the fiction of “makers versus takers” and “welfare queens.”
I’m certainly no fan of lotteries. I think they’re a way of shifting state expenses onto citizens who can least afford to pay for them.
But targeting lottery winners for special scrutiny is ridiculous scapegoating. It’s ginning up a problem that seems easy to solve, rather than actually addressing health care in America.
[bit]: http://bit.ly/2lUXmzD
[usnews]: https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2017-03-07/obamacare-replacement-bill-targets-lottery-winners
[popsugar]: https://www.popsugar.com/tech/Sean-Spicer-Stacks-Papers-Meme-43278559