The pandemic-era safety net will disappear soon. Here’s what to do about it. 

A small but shining bright spot during this pandemic has been the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, passed just a week into the first lockdowns in the United States. In addition to raising the share of Medicaid costs covered by the federal government, it also largely prevented states from disenrolling individuals from the program. Further, the Act loosened application and renewal procedures for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, alongside emergency benefit increases for many SNAP recipients. 

As of last November, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program covered nearly 86 million people, while SNAP covered 41.3 million, a 22.2% and 11.9% increase respectively from February 2020. Those are record levels and these policies have stabilized services for many families rocked by this crisis. 

The catch: Those measures will only last as long as the federal public health emergency, which is currently scheduled to end in mid-July. 

On April 12, the Secretary of Health and Human Services renewed the state of emergency for the ninth time since the first cases were reported in the United States. With widespread ‘fatigue’ over the pandemic and the easing of public health measures across the country, this 90-day extension could be the last. States already facing dire personnel shortages will have one year to review eligibility for tens of millions of Medicaid recipients while maintaining timely review for all new applicants. Meanwhile, states will also have to remove flexible application procedures in SNAP and reduce benefits to pre-pandemic levels, an average cut of $82 per month per household. 

Of course, this is a capitalist country. Whatever politicians in either party say, our government is ruled by money and the big business owners, landlords, and stock traders who hoard it. And just as with the end of the enhanced child tax credit or modestly increased unemployment benefits, our government has once again decided to put short-term profits over people’s lives. 

Since the Social Security Act passed in the depths of the Great Depression, the rich have only been interested in the safety net because it helps them squeeze as much work as possible out of the poor and vulnerable. For them, benefits are only relevant when too many workers would die without them. This is one reason why every year, hundreds of thousands of low-income Americans lose access to public assistance for food, housing, and medical treatment. 

For some, these benefit cutoffs are due simply to the absurdly low income and asset limits for these programs that render people ineligible during minor income fluctuations. The Urban Institute has estimated that more than 14 million Medicaid beneficiaries could lose benefits for this reason alone. Others inevitably run afoul of the countless regulations governing work requirements, drug use, family composition, and on and on. Since the welfare rights movement of the 1960s, states, counties, and the federal government implemented these restrictions to criminalize the poor and limit the population eligible for assistance. 

And still, others lose benefits only because all these complex application procedures have made them very difficult for most ordinary people to understand and complete. This barrier is exceptionally high for people without stable addresses or computer access, for whom English is not their first language, immigrants and people of color, and the elderly and disabled. 

For these reasons, experts have warned since the pandemic began that once the public health emergency ends, states will be incentivized to review applications for these programs as quickly as they can. A politically charged time crunch will drastically increase the possibility for both caseworker and applicant error. Those pressures will only increase as some states look to ‘supplement’ — or replace — their unionized staff with unscrupulous private contractors. Utah’s experience with the end of policies preventing disenrollment from CHIP last year is illustrative. Though state officials argue that they tried to contact beneficiaries, time pressures and communication problems led to 41% of children in the program losing access to healthcare. 

In the short term, the best defense here is a good offense. The Department of Health and Human Services, President Joe Biden, and Congress seem either unwilling or unable to ensure people aren’t left hungry and without healthcare. Individual beneficiaries and progressive organizations can help deal with this impending disaster by teaching people how to properly file their renewal paperwork and appeal if necessary to ensure they receive the benefits to which they are entitled. 

In the long term, however, the only real solution to these problems is to remove the profit interests of the wealthy few from the political calculations of government. But because the rich will not give up their power and influence willingly, just government requires renewal of the class struggle. This means a fundamental redistribution of economic and political power from the rich to the poor, brought about by working-class organizations ready to educate and organize the people for an open confrontation with the 1% and their lackeys. As the National Union of the Homeless says, “You only get what you’re organized to take.” 

Yvonne Bramble is a researcher at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park.

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