Kellyanne Conway showed up on ABC’s The Week this Sunday and took a slew of tough questions about Medicaid cuts in the GOP’s latest Obamacare-repeal bill.
As The Huffington Post points out, Obamacare offered states extra federal matching funds to expand Medicaid to people who hover near the poverty line. The GOP’s latest bill would take away those funds and and force states to roll back their expansions or get rid of them entirely.
When ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Conway about this, she replied by suggesting Obamacare’s problem was that it covered too many people — people who should see if there are “other options” for them.
“Obamacare took Medicaid, which was designed to help the poor, the needy, the sick, disabled, also children and pregnant women, it took it and went way above the poverty line to many able-bodied Americans who … should at least see if there are other options for them,” she said.
She added that if people are “able-bodied and they want to work, then they’ll have employer-sponsored benefits like you and I do.”
From HuffPo:
If only it were that easy.
Among the able-bodied adults that Conway and congressional Republicans have in mind ― that is, non-elderly adults on Medicaid who don’t qualify for disability benefits ― 79 percent are in families where someone works and 59 percent have jobs themselves, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
The problem is that many work in low-paying, temporary, or part-time jobs that don’t offer coverage. In 2014, just 30 percent of working adults with incomes at or below the poverty line had employer-sponsored coverage available to them.
Watch the segment below. You can see the full segment here.
.@KellyannePolls: Obamacare opened up Medicaid to "many able-bodied Americans who should at least see if there are others options for them." pic.twitter.com/fzqvuwXrXB
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) June 25, 2017
Featured image via screen grab
