09/11/2026
Our conversation must go beyond, “Well, people should have to work if they want benefits.” That sounds real simple until we start talking about real people and real life.
A whole lot of people on BadgerCare already work. They take care of our elderly, care for our children, cook our food, clean our buildings, stock our stores, deliver our packages, and work the part-time, seasonal, gig, and low-wage jobs that many of us depend on every single day. The problem is that many of those jobs do not come with affordable health insurance. So when we talk about Medicaid recipients as though we are automatically talking about people who do not work, we are starting the conversation from a place that simply is not true.
There are also people whose ability to work consistently is complicated by real life. They are managing mental health challenges, chronic illnesses, substance use, unstable housing, transportation barriers, caregiving responsibilities, inconsistent employment, or medical conditions that significantly affect what they can do from one day to the next. Some are living with disabilities that do not fit neatly into what people imagine when they hear the word “disabled.”
Anybody who has ever helped someone navigate Medicaid, FoodShare, Social Security, housing, disability benefits, or almost any government system knows exactly what I mean. Sondercove providers do it everyday! Monday- Sunday. A notice sent to an old address matters, deadlines matter, documentation does too. Understanding what you are being asked to provide matters. Having reliable internet, transportation, identification, access to your medical records, or simply someone who can help you understand what the letter is asking you to do can matter as well. The people most likely to struggle with those requirements are often the same people already trying to survive some of the hardest circumstances.
And this is why this conversation is bigger than the person whose name is on the Medicaid card. There seems to be this idea that we can make health care harder for poor people to access and the consequences will somehow stay contained within poor communities. They won’t.
When people lose access to medications, primary care, mental health treatment, substance-use treatment, preventative care, and other health services, their needs do not disappear because their insurance did. Those needs move somewhere else. They show up in emergency rooms, crisis systems, shelters, schools, jails, workplaces, families, and community organizations that are already stretched thin. They show up when untreated conditions become emergencies, when people become too sick to work, when families have to leave work to care for someone else, and when hospitals absorb care that could have been provided earlier and at a much lower cost.
So some of the very people advocating for policies like this because they believe someone else should have to “work for their benefits” may eventually find the consequences of those policies knocking at their own doors. That is how public health works. We do not get to dismantle somebody else’s access to health care and assume the fallout will politely remain on the other side of town.
There is also an irony here that deserves more attention. For some people, Medicaid is not the thing keeping them from working. Medicaid is one of the very things helping them stay healthy enough to work.
Taking someone’s Medicaid away does not cure their illness, resolve their mental health challenges, make housing affordable, repair their car, create reliable public transportation, provide childcare, or turn a low-wage job into one with employer-sponsored insurance. It simply means they now have all of those same circumstances without health insurance.
Be careful what you vote to take away from somebody else when your understanding of who uses it was built on a stereotype. The door you think you’re closing on “those people” may very well be your own.
Because somebody will still pay for the consequences. The only question is who, how much, and how much worse things will have to get before we do.
