What Does Welfare Do?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


As the New York Times goes after New York’s Medicaid program for fraud, waste, and abuse, it’s worth taking the time to read this new report by the Center on Budget Policy Priorities documenting the positive side of social welfare programs. The safety net in the United States, meager as it is, has nonetheless managed to cut the number of Americans living in poverty in half, has reduced the severity of poverty for those who are poor (raising their incomes from 29 percent of the poverty line to 57 percent), and providing health insurance to tens of millions of individuals—many of those children. The report, I guess, is a bit of cheerleading, but sometimes this cheerleading gets lost when all the headlines are screaming about waste, fraud, and abuse.

As far as Medicaid goes, there’s another sort of waste, fraud, and abuse that goes on and, sadly, won’t garner a two-part investigative feature: namely, the lengths towards which states will actively try to deter people from getting on the Medicaid roles. This can be done through a complex registration process, or making it harder for people to figure out whether they’re eligible or not, or what have you. This sort of abuse augurs for expanding, not contracting, Medicaid. (Ideally, of course, we’d revamp the entire health care system, but in the absence of that, Medicaid ought to be expanded.) There’s absolutely no reason to cut the program—as George Pataki and the Republicans in Albany have been doing for the past decade—just because unscrupulous dentists are making a killing by gaming the system. Police it better. Offer stiffer penalties for this sort of white-collar crime—after all, serious jail time is more likely to deter white-collar criminals than, say, murderers. But don’t gut it; as CBPP shows here, it’s working far too well and is far too important for far too many people.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate