Quote:He was commiting fraud in that case because Medicaid wouldn't be available for someone making north of 75k.

 

 

Quote:In florida they didn't expand medicaid, the poverty level for a family of 5 currently is $28,440 annually. https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines

 

pregnancy medicaid allows up to 192% of the poverty level for coverage. which means the coverage for a family of 5 for pregnancy medicaid would end at (1.92 x $28,440) $54,528. Even a family of 6 or 7 making 75k a year is beyond the income limits. https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines

 

So if he was really making 75k a year and collecting medicaid he was committing fraud, most likely they didn't actually get married and on paper his new wife was only claiming her income or no income. Either way someone making 75k a year was never the intention of medicaid but that's the problem with state funded welfare, it's easily abused, it's easily cheated, and there's never any consequences. Which is why I advocate localizing welfare as much as possible, that way there's an incentive for communities to turn in and report fraudulent abusers. 

 

There is no doubt in my mind that he was "using the system" so to speak (I wonder which other Presidential candidate does something similar?).  I don't know if he was married "on paper" to the woman, that's just what he always said.  Now that I think about it though, he did always mention getting a pretty good size tax "refund".  Usually he would blow a significant amount of it on a new computer or they would take a trip to Orlando and some of the theme parks.

 

Regardless, I do acknowledge that the cases that I've seen with my own two eyes are probably not "typical" of most that need assistance, but it sure does highlight the need to reign in the system.  There is far too much abuse that costs me, someone that actually has to pay taxes.

 

There are also far too many that have come to depend on the temporary help that is government assistance as being a permanent situation for them.  The problem is, they seem to think that government is their "ATM machine" and they don't realize that the very people that have to fill that machine are the very ones that could/would employ them.

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