It’s always a good time to identify the Washington Post’s Philip Bump as a duplicitous little dork, so let’s look at his latest column in which he argues that government-run health insurance for low-income individuals (and their unfortunate children) is not a form of welfare if you simply call it something else.
Bump, who famously doesn’t know where babies come from, wrote Thursday in opposition to recent work requirements placed on Medicaid recipients by way of the just-passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act. For the uninitiated, the new law mandates, among other things, that able-bodied adults prove they’re working a certain number of hours per month, are in school, or are performing community service to be eligible for Medicaid. In other words, it ensures recipients are making themselves useful to some degree and not just receiving free health insurance while getting high at home.
This is identical to how unemployment insurance works — a recipient who lost his job routinely proves to the government he’s attempting to find work in order to continue receiving financial assistance.
Everyone knows these types of government programs more broadly as “welfare.” But Bump proposed in his article that there’s a difference between government-run financial benefits that go to “dudes loafing on their couches,” and government-run financial benefits that go to someone who provides a service to dudes loafing on their couches. “[I]t’s useful to point out that this whole idea of Medicaid recipients somehow mooching off the system is bizarre,” wrote Bump. “Medicaid isn’t a welfare program, it’s a health insurance program. The money being spent on Medicaid recipients isn’t money going to dudes loafing on their couches; it’s money going to doctors treating those dudes for medical conditions.”
You see? Because the government-run financial benefits go directly to healthcare providers who then treat the customers who paid using those financial benefits, it’s not welfare! Amazing!
This would be like the government giving Red Lobster money to feed people who don’t work and insisting it’s not welfare.
Don’t be silly! There’s no welfare there. It’s shellfish coverage!
Healthcare, like every other service, isn’t free. Someone has to pay for it. And if that someone isn’t the person receiving the service, then it’s someone else. And if that someone else is the government, which pays using American taxpayer dollars, then it’s welfare.
You can just look at Philip Bump and assume he’s really, really dumb, but that would be a mistake. The reality is he’s smart enough to know he’s lying because he does it all the time in order to mislead anyone unlucky enough to be exposed to his byline.
