Loreben Tuquero, PolitiFact
“Almost 5 million able-bodied Medicaid recipients ‘simply choose not to work’ and ‘spend six hours a day socializing and watching television.’”
Scott Jennings on “CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip” on July 1
Republicans defended the GOP megabill’s Medicaid adjustments as focusing on a bunch of individuals they imagine shouldn’t qualify: individuals who can work however as a substitute select to remain house and chill.
Several Republican politicians and pundits, together with CNN senior political commentator Scott Jennings, pegged that group’s dimension at about 5 million folks.
“There are like almost 5 million able-bodied people on Medicaid who simply choose not to work,” Jennings said July 1 on “CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip.” “They spend six hours a day socializing and watching television. And if you can’t get off grandma’s couch and work, I don’t want to pay for your welfare.”
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz picked up on a few of these factors throughout a July 14 appearance on Fox News. “When the program was created 60 years ago, it never dawned on anyone that you would take able-bodied individuals who could work and put them on Medicaid. Today the average able-bodied person on Medicaid who doesn’t work, they watch 6.1 hours of television or just hang out,” Oz stated.
Medicaid is a federal-state medical insurance program that covers medical take care of lower-income folks.
Jennings cited two items of knowledge: an estimate of what number of fewer folks would have protection due to the work requirement and an evaluation of how nonworking Medicaid recipients spend their time. But he made assumptions that the information doesn’t assist.
Jennings Misrepresents CBO Estimate
The 4.8 million determine stems from a June 24 Congressional Budget Office analysis of a preliminary House model of the huge tax and spending bundle. The workplace, Congress’ nonpartisan analysis arm, projected that provisions of the invoice would trigger 7.8 million fewer folks to have well being protection by 2034. They would come with 4.8 million folks beforehand eligible for Medicaid described as “able-bodied” adults 19 to 64 years outdated who haven’t any dependents and who “do not meet the community engagement requirement” of doing “work-related activities” at the least 80 hours a month.
Apart from working, doing group service and attending faculty additionally fulfill the group engagement requirement.
Jennings paired that statistic with a separate evaluation of how nondisabled grownup Medicaid recipients with out dependent youngsters spend their time.
But the CBO estimate was a projection — it doesn’t symbolize the present variety of nondisabled Medicaid recipients, nor does it say 4.8 million folks on this group “choose not to work.” The determine represented what number of fewer folks would have protection due to the invoice’s group engagement requirement.
“The challenge with Jennings’ comments — and they’ve been echoed elsewhere by elected Republicans — is that CBO never said that 4.8 million people were out of compliance with the proposed work requirements; they said that 4.8 million people would lose coverage because of the work requirements,” stated Adrianna McIntyre, an assistant professor of well being coverage and politics on the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Among the Medicaid growth inhabitants, the legislation requires most adults with out dependent youngsters and fogeys of youngsters older than 13 to work or take part in different qualifying actions 80 hours each month. States might want to confirm that candidates met the work requirement for one to 3 months earlier than they utilized. States may also be required to confirm that present enrollees met the work requirement for at the least a month between eligibility determinations, which will probably be required at the least twice a yr.
Research into Medicaid work necessities imposed on the state stage has proven that individuals discovered it troublesome to meet them and submit documentation, contributing to coverage losses.
In Arkansas, which added a piece requirement to Medicaid in 2018, a research based mostly on almost 6,000 respondents discovered that about 95% of the goal inhabitants had been already working or certified for an exemption, however a 3rd of them didn’t hear concerning the work necessities. As a outcome, almost 17,000 Medicaid recipients topic to work necessities misplaced protection.
KFF found that adults ages 50 to 64 are extra liable to shedding Medicaid protection due to the brand new work necessities. More than 1 in 10 in that age group stated that they had retired, and amongst them, 28% reported being disabled, stated KFF, a well being info nonprofit that features KFF Health News.
Benjamin Sommers, a well being care economics professor on the Harvard Chan faculty, stated lots of the 4.8 million “able-bodied” folks within the CBO estimate “will actually be engaged in the activities they are supposed to be doing, and lose coverage because they are not able to navigate the reporting requirements with the state and lose coverage from red tape.”
When Recipients Don’t Work, It’s Rarely From Lack of Interest
There is not any common definition for “able-bodied”; incapacity may be assessed in several methods. But different research supply a lot smaller estimates than 4.8 million Medicaid recipients with out dependents who can work however select to not.
Millions of working-age, nondisabled adults joined the Medicaid ranks in states that expanded eligibility beneath the Affordable Care Act. There had been about 34 million working-age nondisabled Medicaid enrollees in 2024, according to the CBO, 15 million of whom enrolled by the ACA.
A KFF analysis discovered a smaller determine of 26 million Medicaid-covered adults, ages 19 to 64, who don’t obtain Supplemental Security Income, Social Security Disability Insurance, or Medicare advantages.
Among this group, KFF estimated, 64% had been working both full time or half time. The causes the remainder weren’t working included caregiving (12%); sickness or incapacity (10%); retirement, lack of ability to seek out work, or different motive (8%); and college attendance (7%).
Few folks cited lack of curiosity in working as the rationale for his or her unemployment. An Urban Institute study discovered 2% of Medicaid growth enrollees with out dependents who neither labored nor attended faculty — or 300,000 people out of a projected 15 million topic to work necessities — cited an absence of curiosity in working as the rationale they had been unemployed.
This was per the Brookings Institution’s June 5 evaluation that discovered that, of 4.3 million grownup enrollees who labored fewer than 80 hours a month and didn’t have any exercise limitations or sicknesses, about 300,000 reported that they “did not work because they did not want to.”
Mostly Women, Mostly With a High School Degree or Less
When Republicans have described nondisabled grownup Medicaid recipients, they’ve usually portrayed them as males of their 30s “playing video games” of their dad and mom’ basement or who “smoke weed all day.” Research paints a unique image.
Jane Tavares and Marc Cohen, of the University of Massachusetts-Boston Gerontology Department, researched Medicaid recipients who aren’t disabled or working, haven’t any dependent youngsters beneath 18, and aren’t in class. They cited 2023 census information from the American Community Survey.
They discovered:
The common age of this inhabitants is 41, and 26% are older than 50.
Almost 80% are feminine.
Most, 80%, have a highschool training or much less.
Their median particular person revenue is $0, and their median family revenue is $44,800.
About 56% labored up to now 5 years, and 23% labored within the prior yr. About 30% are trying or out there for work.
“They are not healthy young adults just hanging out,” the authors, together with well being legislation consultants Sara Rosenbaum and Alison Barkoff, wrote April 30.
“It’s clear based on their prior work history and family size/income that they are exceptionally poor and have likely left the workforce to care for adult children or older adults,” Tavares instructed PolitiFact. “Even if these individuals could work, they would have very few job opportunities and it would come at the cost of the people they are providing care for.”
AEI Study Not Definitively Linked to CBO Estimate
On the social platform X, Jennings posted the CBO letter and a May 29 analysis by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative assume tank, about “how nondisabled Medicaid recipients without children spend their time.” PolitiFact contacted CNN to succeed in Jennings however didn’t obtain a reply.
The creator of that research, American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Kevin Corinth, analyzed survey information and located that Medicaid recipients who don’t report working spend on common 6.1 hours a day “on all socializing, relaxing and leisure activities (including television and video games).”
But it’s unsure whether or not the folks within the survey inhabitants he analyzed overlap with the folks included within the CBO evaluation, stated Jennifer Tolbert, deputy director of KFF’s Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured.
Corinth instructed PolitiFact “it is difficult to say” how the inhabitants he analyzed differs from the CBO’s. Tavares, Cohen, Rosenbaum, and Barkoff stated Corinth’s dataset defined disability narrowly, resulting in a “serious underestimation of disability” among the many inhabitants of Medicaid recipients he seemed into. It targeted on Medicaid recipients who obtain Supplemental Security Income or have a well being situation that forestalls them from working. The researchers stated this strategy is simply too slender as a result of the SSI program accounts for under these “most deeply impoverished adults with severe disabilities.”
The group gave a hypothetical instance of a 54-year-old lady with a critical coronary heart situation who can work only some hours every week. She will not be thought of disabled beneath the SSI program, however she could also be restricted within the work she will do and may have time to relaxation.
“Using her ‘leisure time’ to justify a work requirement grossly misrepresents her reality,” the group wrote.
Corinth’s evaluation additionally exhibits that nonworking Medicaid recipients spend much less time socializing, enjoyable, or engaged in leisure actions than nonworking individuals who aren’t coated by Medicaid. Nonworking Medicaid recipients additionally spend extra time in search of work and doing house responsibilities and errands, it discovered.
Our Ruling
Jennings stated virtually 5 million nondisabled Medicaid recipients “simply choose not to work” and “spend six hours a day socializing and watching television.”
The 5 million determine stems from a CBO projection that 4.8 million folks would go with out protection by 2034 because of not fulfilling the group engagement necessities. It just isn’t descriptive of present enrollees and doesn’t specify that these folks select to not work.
Jennings cited an American Enterprise Institute evaluation on how nondisabled Medicaid recipients with no dependents spend their time, however it’s unsure if the inhabitants in that evaluation overlaps with that within the CBO estimate.
Current snapshots of the inhabitants Jennings described produce a smaller quantity. A survey by the Urban Institute discovered that 2% of Medicaid growth enrollees with out dependents who had been neither working nor attending faculty — about 300,000 folks — cited an absence of curiosity in working. Other analysis has discovered causes this group doesn’t work embody caregiving, sickness or incapacity, retirement, and lack of ability to seek out work.
Studies of nonworking Medicaid recipients have discovered the bulk are girls and have a highschool training or much less. Their common age is 41, and greater than half have a piece historical past up to now 5 years.
We price Jennings’ assertion False.
Our Sources
Email interview, Jane Tavares, University of Massachusetts-Boston adjunct teacher in gerontology, July 2, 2025
Email interview, Marc Cohen, University of Massachusetts-Boston professor of gerontology, July 2, 2025
Email interview, Sara Rosenbaum, George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health professor emerita of well being legislation and coverage, July 2, 2025
Email interview, Alison Barkoff, George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health affiliate professor of well being legislation and coverage, July 2, 2025
Email interview, Edwin Park, Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy Center for Children and Families analysis professor, July 2, 2025
Email interview, Benjamin Sommers, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health professor of well being care economics, July 2, 2025
Phone interview, Jennifer Tolbert, deputy director of KFF’s Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured, July 2, 2025
Email interview, Adrianna McIntyre, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health assistant professor of well being coverage and politics, July 2, 2025
Phone interview, Michael Karpman, Urban Institute Health Policy Division principal analysis affiliate, July 3, 2025
Email alternate, Congressional Budget Office spokesperson, July 2, 2025
Email interview, Kevin Corinth, American Enterprise Institute senior fellow, July 3, 2025
X post by Rapid Response 47, June 30, 2025
Transcript of “CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip,” July 1, 2025
Congressional Budget Office, “Re: Information Concerning Medicaid-Related Provisions in Title IV of H.R. 1,” June 24, 2025
Benjamin D. Sommers, M.D., Ph.D., Anna L. Goldman, M.D., M.P.A., M.P.H., Robert J. Blendon, Sc.D., E. John Orav, Ph.D., and Arnold M. Epstein, M.D., “Medicaid Work Requirements — Results From the First Year in Arkansas,” June 19, 2019
Congressional Budget Office, Baseline Projections, Medicaid, June 2024
KFF, “Understanding the Intersection of Medicaid and Work: An Update,” May 30, 2025
Urban Institute, “Many Working People Would Be Shut Out of Medicaid Under Proposed Work Requirements,” June 11, 2025
Wisconsin Watch, “Have Millions of Nondisabled, Working-Age Adults Been Added to Medicaid?” July 2, 2025
CBS News, “Too Sick To Work, Some Americans Worry Trump’s Bill Will Strip Their Health Insurance,” June 26, 2025
Brookings Institution, “Any Way You Look at It You Lose: Medicaid Work Requirements Will Either Fall Short of Anticipating Savings or Harm Vulnerable Beneficiaries,” June 5, 2025
X post by Scott Jennings, July 2, 2025
American Enterprise Institute, “How Nondisabled Medicaid Recipients Without Children Spend Their Time,” May 29, 2025
Congressional Budget Office, “Estimated Budgetary Effects of an Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute to H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Relative to CBO’s January 2025 Baseline,” June 29, 2025
Geiger Gibson Program in Community Health, George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health, “The Fundamental Flaw in ‘How Workers Spend Their Time’,” June 4, 2025
X post by Aaron Rupar, July 1, 2025
X post by Congressman Brandon Gill, July 2, 2025
MainAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston, “Profile of Medicaid Population Age 18-64, Working and Non-Working Medicaid Beneficiaries, and ‘Able-Bodied’ Non-Working Medicaid Beneficiaries,” May 2025
The Milbank Quarterly, “Who’s Affected by Medicaid Work Requirements? It’s Not Who You Think,” April 30, 2025
KFF, “Different Data Source, but Same Results: Most Adults Subject to Medicaid Work Requirements Are Working or Face Barriers to Work,” June 25, 2025