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Keith Negley<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tGet your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.<\/a><\/p>\n A few days before the passage of President Donald Trump\u2019s One Big Beautiful Bill, the White House released<\/a> a \u201cMyth vs. Fact\u201d document to counter criticism of the inclusion of work requirements for Medicaid eligibility. The proposed new rules need not cause worry among Americans, the document implied, because only \u201cable-\u00adbodied adults\u201d would have to show proof of employment. In return, the administration claimed, the needy would gain something beyond mere federal health coverage: dignity.<\/p>\n For decades, Republicans (and austere liberals) have deployed the \u201cable-bodied\u201d trope to sell the public on employment as a condition of government assistance. In this context, the expression brings to mind capable workers glued to their sofas\u2014\u201ccouch potatoes,\u201d as former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz once put it<\/a>\u2014eating junk food and playing video games while living on the government dole.<\/p>\n Putting aside the fact that nobody gets rich from the ability to see a doctor, the rhetoric is confounding. What does \u201cable-bodied\u201d mean?<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t a term typically used by medical professionals. And the phrase is not, in fact, indicative of a vast slouching class\u2014lots of disabled people have jobs. The vast majority of adult Medicaid recipients who can work already do; KFF reports<\/a> that nearly two-thirds of those not enrolled in the Social Security disability programs are working full or part time. Most nonworking recipients have legitimate \u00adexcuses, including retirement, caregiving, school, or an illness.<\/p>\n \u201cAble-bodied\u201d may sound like a medical determination, but, as disability activist Imani Barbarin told me, it\u2019s really just a vague way \u201cto signal this idea that disability can be seen.\u201d Under this rubric, people with invisible disabilities that can make work extremely challenging\u2014including psychiatric disabilities like bipolar disorder or chronic illnesses such as lupus\u2014can be cast as lazy.<\/p>\n To many people, the notion that the \u201cable-bodied\u201d must labor sounds reasonable on its face, but it\u2019s mostly just culture war; in reality, work requirements don\u2019t \u00admeaningfully boost employment or do much to slash government debt.<\/p>\n The first Trump administration granted waivers to 13 states to allow them to impose Medicaid work requirements. Only Arkansas fully did so. But instead of creating a fairer, more efficient health care system, the policy was a disaster<\/a>. The requirements caused a downturn in coverage with no increase in employment. (Eventually, the waivers were struck down by the courts or rescinded by the Biden administration.)<\/p>\n This failed experiment hasn\u2019t swayed Republicans who still suggest that the problem with Medicaid is \u201cable-bodied\u201d nonworkers. When he introduced a bill to end \u201cObamacare\u2019s Medicaid expansion\u201d in May, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) wrote<\/a> that it was a \u201cscam\u201d that funds \u201cillegal aliens and the able-bodied while racking up trillions in federal debt.\u201d<\/p>\n This logic was used by backers of Trump\u2019s big bill, which requires states to implement work requirements by January 2027. The mandate would give the entire nation a bit of that Arkansas magic: The Congressional Budget Office estimates it will result in at least 5.3 million <\/a>people losing health coverage by 2034 simply because they will be unable to navigate the bureaucratic hurdles their states will impose.<\/p>\n This is not the first time such rhetoric has been used to hurt the poor. The weaponization of \u201cable-bodied\u201d hearkens back to ideas older than America. In 1351, after a wave of bubonic plague, England\u2019s Parliament enacted the Statute of Labourers. The scourge had brought on a shortage of workers, and the law required that everyone under 68, \u201cable in body,\u201d and not wealthy had to work\u2014at no more than pre-plague wages. \u201cThis tendency to fantasize\u2014when times change and things aren\u2019t what they were\u2014that the poorest and most vulnerable are actually some sort of malicious freeloading class is a very old one,\u201d medievalist Elise Wang, an assistant professor at California State University, Fullerton, pointed out<\/a> on Bluesky.<\/p>\n When President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the minimum wage in 1938, he said<\/a> the United States \u201cshould be able to devise ways and means of ensuring to all our able-bodied working men and women a fair day\u2019s pay for a fair day\u2019s work.\u201d His language made the fault lines of disability explicit: The new law created an exception, which remains in place today, intentionally allowing some disabled workers to be paid less than minimum wage. Even when used in support of workers, the \u201cable-bodied\u201d language boomeranged on disabled people.<\/p>\n The myth of the lazy masses appeals, but it can\u2019t stand up to reality.<\/p>\n