Category Archives: Mend the Gap

Thousands of Medicaid Recipients in Arkansas Lose Access to Care

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Thousands of Medicaid Recipients in Arkansas Lose Access to Care

Siena Ruggeri
October 2, 2018

In September 2018, the state of Arkansas revoked coverage for more than 4,300 Medicaid users. The state recently implemented a stringent work requirement on Medicaid recipients under the Arkansas Works program, stipulating that they must perform 80 hours of work, service, job training, or education a month. The state unceremoniously dropped recipients who did not properly log their hours into an online portal for three months. These dropped Medicaid users have no possibility of reapplying for the entirety of 2018.

This news came as a shock to the many low-income Arkansans who previously qualified for Medicaid. Due to the low profile implementation of the program, many were not aware of the new requirements. Some will not even realize they have lost their healthcare coverage until they go to the doctor or try to fill a prescription.

This is not an isolated phenomenon. Across the country, the Trump administration and its allies are encouraging burdensome work requirements for programs like Medicaid and SNAP (the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program). Indiana, New Hampshire, and Kentucky already received federal approval to implement their own Medicaid work requirements, while at least nine other states are considering them.

Even if Medicaid recipients in Arkansas are aware of the recent changes, they might not be able to access the Arkansas Works website to log their hours. According to the Federal Elections Commission, about a fourth of Arkansas’s population lives in areas without Internet service. The online portal has also been fraught with problems, preventing many from logging their work hours. Curiously, the website is down for 10 hours every night for maintenance, leaving it out of commission for 70 hours a week. These barriers make compliance difficult for a population already stretched thin.

It’s not as if Medicaid recipients aren’t working. At best, only 15% of enrollees not exempt from existing work requirements are not employed (Urban Institute); the vast majority are already working. The reason they are utilizing Medicaid is not due a lack of work—it is due to the deep poverty they are experiencing. Recipients do not have access to quality jobs that pay a living wage and provide health benefits.

Let’s not be mistaken—programs like Medicaid already have strict work requirements. These additional work requirements are an attempt to burden vulnerable populations with administrative barriers to affordable, quality healthcare. By dropping more than four thousand people from Medicaid coverage, the state of Arkansas stands to save 30 million a year. States like Arkansas that choose to implement these cumbersome some work requirements are choosing savings over care for their people.

Burdensome work requirements don’t address the realities of the low-income populations Medicaid serves. Work requirements don’t create stable jobs that pay a living wage, nor do they do anything to alleviate the racial income gap. Black Arkansans are twice as likely to live below poverty level than their white counterparts. These work requirements are complex in nature—they are designed to quietly dismantle social safety nets while stigmatizing low-income people as the problem. If Arkansas is serious about getting its residents off Medicaid, it needs to address economic inequality and reinvest in the working class.

The data from Arkansas gives us a look at the true human cost of burdensome work requirements. As other states roll out similar programs, thousands of people will unknowingly lose their coverage. There is no human benefit to burdensome work requirements. They only serve to harm people who utilize programs like Medicaid and SNAP to survive. NETWORK opposes implementing work requirements on our most effective human needs programs, and urges lawmakers to craft these programs to uphold human dignity, not diminish it.

Walking and Praying for an End to Immigrant Detention

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Walking and Praying for an End to Immigrant Detention

Vince Herberholt
September 13, 2018

St. Joseph Parish in Seattle embarked on a journey almost a year ago that recently resulted in a prayer pilgrimage and Mass at the GEO run Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma Washington – a destination 30 minutes away by bus and light years away from where we come from as a faith community.

St. Joseph is a wealthy Jesuit parish in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.  The houses that surround the parish sell for millions of dollars.  Very few of our members would be considered poor or marginalized and almost no one would be considered “illegal” or more correctly undocumented.  And yet a year ago, our parish, known for its commitment to social justice,  started a journey of education and  solidarity with  the immigrant, refugee, asylum seeker and those detained in Immigration Prison.

After some preliminary research and assessment, we discerned that the greatest need, our interest and gifts as a faith community lie with public witness and advocacy.  So beginning in March 2018 we published a Parish Letter, “A Church of Accompaniment,” that serves as our Mission Statement.  From there we organized 2 community forums on Immigration and detention attended by over 300 people.  In the second forum we were joined by our Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, our representative who is a staunch advocate for immigrant justice.

Now with growing parish support, we began planning with our Jesuit Sister Parish, St. Leo the Great, for a pilgrimage and Mass at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma.  On August 25th we gathered at St. Leo’s and began our prayerful 1.6 mile walk to the detention center in a bleak industrial area near the Port of Tacoma.  We were surprised and pleased that over 500 faithful people joined us.

The Mass was co-presided by our two pastors, Frs. John Whitney SJ and Matt Holland SJ, and the homily was delivered by Fr. Scott Santarosa SJ, the provincial of the Jesuit West Province.  His words exhorted us to “bridge all divides, and foster understanding among diverse peoples and cultures, and make people feel in the most real way at home.”

At the conclusion of the Mass we blessed the detainees and their captors.  It was a hopeful day that renewed our energy for the continuing journey and cemented our relationship with immigrants and refugees.

To learn more about St. Joseph Parish, visit their website here. 

Blog: Income Gap Continues to Widen – Shouldn’t It Be Decreasing?

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Blog: Income Gap Continues to Widen – Shouldn’t It Be Decreasing?

Matthew Shuster
Oct 11, 2011

The wealth gap in the United States has grown larger, and the ugly beast is not done growing. According to an article on the Huffington Post’s official website, the median income for the United States is less than $27,000 annually.

Meanwhile, the wealthiest, much-smaller portion of the American population who make over a million dollars has increased to 94,000 people. In comparison, in 2009, 79,000 people made over a million dollars. How can it be that the richest people in America continue to get more and more money while a much larger number of people are struggling to make ends meet with just $30,000 to 40,000 a year (If that!)? Pretty soon, there will be no middle-class, just two teams: The Strugglers who must obsess over grocery shopping coupons and the Exuberantly Wealthy.

People have a right to feel pessimistic about the unemployment rate and salaries in America. Not only are the unemployed unhappy financially, but even people who already have jobs are upset because necessities like food and fuel are becoming more and more expensive while their incomes are not increasing. According to the Huffington Post, nine in ten employees do not expect a raise in the upcoming year. Furthermore, household income has declined more during this “recovery” period than during the initial impact of the economic recession.

Something must be done to mend this income gap and there should be more jobs created for the unemployed. In addition, I hope that there will be more salary rewards given to the already-employed who work hard to care for their families. If you would like to read into this further, check out this article!

Banks, Bail-outs, and the Widening Gap

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Banks, Bail-outs, and the Widening Gap

By Matthew Schuster
October 27, 2011

Over the past few months, we have looked at a wide variety of factors that contributed the wealth gap. Check out ournewest resource, a handout that will take you on a quick journey through time to examine the role government regulations – or lack thereof – play in contributing to this growing inequaltiy.

Blog: Thoughts on the Half In Ten Campaign—Cutting Poverty Rates in Half over Ten Years

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Thoughts on the Half In Ten Campaign—Cutting Poverty Rates in Half over Ten Years

By Claire Wheeler
October 27, 2011

Yesterday, while walking back to the NETWORK office after a coalition campaign (Half In Ten) panel discussion on poverty, my thoughts were racing. I was contemplating the different reasons people are motivated to care about the welfare of another human being. I then questioned the potential explanations as to why others are so opposed to the notion of shared responsibility, which promotes the common good. This shared responsibility is not only central to the Catholic faith tradition, but it’s also fundamental to being an American. This is evidenced in both the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution: “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice… promote the general welfare…”

My thoughts were interrupted by a voice politely asking, “Will you help the poor today, Ma’am?” This question came from a man waving a Street Sense newspaper in my peripheral view. Twelve steps later, I confronted a woman sitting on the sidewalk with a cardboard sign that read: “Hi, my name is Carla. I am deaf and homeless….” The clump of pedestrians with whom I was walking all passed by without acknowledging this woman, but behind me, I saw one woman drop back and hand Carla a banana from her lunch. Many Americans are eyewitnesses to poverty on a daily basis, if not living it themselves. It’s unsettling how many of us are able to stare poverty in the face, yet continue on with our routines.

In our country, poverty has been isolated as someone else’s problem. The timeliness of NETWORK’s Super Citizen Campaign is great because of the opportunity to ride the energy waves from the multiple Occupy protests and seize the moment to make progress with our message. The ‘political will’ required to change our infrastructure and create jobs is not confined to our legislators, but to every American. We must be advocates for ourselves and for those who aren’t heard. If we as a nation are to achieve Half In Ten’s stated goal of cutting poverty in half in ten years, we need to proactively help others become civically engaged. When the time comes, more people need to vote for Members of Congress who will champion these social justice issues. Many people are not financially able to write their preferred elected officials a check to help with campaigns, but voting has its own arsenal of power, which has yet to be fully utilized.

I encourage you to read Half In Ten’s reports. To access the full report, click here and to access the summary advocacy sheets, click here. They provide us with substantive material to educate our Congress, acquaintances, and friends and family.

When dealing with those who are ambivalent about poverty, educate them. When dealing with people who claim that they have no obligation to look out for anyone’s welfare but their own—well, it looks like they are in the wrong country.

Measure More than GDP!

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Measure More than GDP!

By Shannon Hughes
July 11, 2011

What if we cared enough about our wellness as people to run statistics about it on a ticker in Times Square? In the Philippines, governors compete for prestige by reporting on and their economic accomplishments, but also their people’s rank according to  the United Nations’ Human Development Index. Government in the US, however, doesn’t officially use this data, instead focusing on stock prices and the GDP to tell us something about the success of our country.

Sarah Burd-Sharps, co-author of The Measure of America, knows that we can’t stop there. By calculating a single number based on the three basic standards of the Human Development Index – health, education, and income –The Measure of America gives us another look at how America measures up. Not surprisingly, inequalities abound across gender, race, and geography. The good news is, we can visit and understand the places that are doing well, and strategically focus policies to decreases the “entire century of progress [that] separates New Jersey’s Asian Americans and South Dakota’s Native Americans” in terms of life expectancy. Check out this video to hear Burd-Sharps explain her work more fully. Ready for more facts? Check out http://www.measureofamerica.org/ for interactive resources including a Common Good Forecaster and a personal Well-o-Meter.

Blog: The Danger of Losing the Middle Class

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Blog: The Danger of Losing the Middle Class

Samuel Fubara, NETWORK Intern
Jul 15, 2011

The American middle class is fast being relegated to the political background by big businesses. The relegation in question is two-fold, economic and political, both of which are inextricable. We know that a middle class is the most essential feature of a functioning democracy because civil society, the part of society that discuses the nation’s direction, exists in the middle class. Hence, the effects of the aforementioned relegation leave our democracy on a very tenuous foundation.

From the political point of view, big businesses are able to push a conservative agenda and finance conservative candidates. The Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission exacerbated this problem. In that decision, the Supreme Court held that corporate funding for political candidates is protected under the first amendment and as such cannot be limited. The day the Supreme Court made its decision in Citizens United, President Obama called it a major victory for health insurance companies and other major corporations that drown out the voices of everyday Americans. At the time, Lainie Rutkow, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins’s School of Public Health, remarked that with the recent efforts at healthcare reform, insurance companies can now select candidates who support their interests and devote unlimited funds to their campaigns to secure their elections or reelections. This has been deleterious to the interests of people who are poor, most of whom depend on programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

The president’s statement portended the situation we are facing today with a majority of the Republican members of Congress fighting to ensure that the benefits of the rich remain intact while Medicare, Medicaid, TANF and other social safety net programs are cut. These programs provide more than a social safety net, they provide a political safety net because they prevent people from falling out of the middle class, the very essence of democracy. Hence, other than the moral obligation we have to people in poverty, given every human being’s dignity, we have a practical interest in ensuring that their lot is bettered so that the ranks of the middle class are increased.

We face a situation worse than the relegation of the middle class. The United States is at a crossroads where its policies are rapidly leading to the complete erosion of the middle class. With the loss of the middle class, capitalism and democracy, as we know them, are likely to devolve into a modern feudalism where people at the economic margins, a group consisting of most Americans, will be left at the mercy of big businesses, in an arrangement of permanent economic subjugation.

Blog: A Crack in America’s Foundation

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Blog: A Crack in America’s Foundation

Stephanie Niedringhaus
May 12, 2011

Most of us know that the huge wealth gap between a tiny fringe of super-rich Americans and most of the rest of us has grown to historic proportions. But do we understand that this gap robs all of us? By that, I don’t mean just financially. Enormous wealth concentrated in the hands of the elite few is cracking the democratic foundation of our nation. It is long past time to ring the alarm bells.

Today, I attended a panel discussion entitled “Reclaiming Our Democracy; Money, Politics, and the Fall of the Middle Class.” It was sponsored by Common Cause and Faith Advocates for Jobs. The crowd was large, and the discussion was sobering.

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, one of the key speakers, told a chilling tale of how decades of improved prosperity for our nation’s “middle class” (most of us) have been reversed in the last thirty years. This has come at a time when unions have lost much of their power (and have come under vicious political attack in recent months), when there is increasing disinvestment in education and infrastructure (e.g., cutting teachers), and when our tax system has grown far less progressive.

Meanwhile, our super-rich have seen their share of the nation’s wealth skyrocket! The statistics are shocking, as can be seen here.

Why did today’s discussion include “reclaiming our democracy” in the title? Because the current extreme concentration of wealth translates into political power, which is helping to shape our government’s policies and laws. The elite few can afford armies of lobbyists and legal expertise to influence the political process, and they can funnel enormous amounts of money into elections. This allows them to maintain and grow their wealth and power – at the expense of most of us, especially people struggling at the economic margins.

In short, our democracy is being chipped away, day by day.

Do you want to learn more? If so, watch for our upcoming campaign on the wealth gap – Mind the Gap!

It is time to reclaim our democracy. More to come…

Blog: Race, Wealth, and Intergenerational Poverty

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Blog: Race, Wealth, and Intergenerational Poverty

Page May
Jun 10, 2011

Blog: Race, Wealth, and Intergenerational Poverty

Article: There will never be a post-racial America if the wealth gap persists.

From The American Prospect-

“Since the election of Barack Obama, a growing belief has emerged that race is no longer a defining feature of one’s life chances. But the extraordinary overlap between wealth and race puts a lie to the notion that America is now in a post-racial era. The smallest racial wealth gap exists for families in the third quartile of the income distribution where the typical black family has only 38 percent of the wealth of the typical white family. In the bottom income quartile—the group containing the working poor—a black family has a startlingly low 2 percent of the wealth of the typical white family.

Given the importance of intergenerational transfers of wealth and past and present barriers preventing black wealth accumulation, private action and market forces alone cannot close an unjust racial wealth gap—public-sector intervention is necessary…However, wealth, given the racial disparity of its distribution, can be an effective non-race-based instrument to eliminate racial inequality. We could shift from an income-based to a wealth-based test for transfer programs. Policy eligibility based on net worth below the national median would qualify a large proportion of black households…. These changes in eligibility should be coupled with policies to promote asset building.”

Read more here.

Blog: Washington Post Highlights Wealth and Income Disparities

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Washington Post Highlights Wealth and Income Disparities

By Stephanie Niedringhaus
June 20, 2011

The front page of Sunday’s Washington Post (6/19/11) featured another chilling article about growing disparities in our nation. Under the heading, “Breakaway Wealth; The Pay Bubble,” one article (“Income gap widens as executives prosper”) included information about how executive compensation rose sharply in recent years while the wealth gap also grew dramatically. During the 1950s and 1960s, it noted, executive pay was relative flat. The steep rise began in the 1970s.

The fact that executive pay was flat when companies were growing in the ‘50s and ‘60s shows that current excuses for excessive compensation – i.e., that executive salaries rise naturally when firms grow – are inaccurate.

Many of today’s executives enjoy luxurious lifestyles while millions of people struggle to put food on the table. According to the article, “The evolution of executive grandeur – from very comfortable to jet-setting – reflects one of the primary reasons that the gap between those with the highest incomes and everyone else is widening.”

Do you want to learn more? Check out the Washington Post.

And be sure to sign up for our Mind the Gap! campaign by clicking here. You can be part of the movement to address this injustice!