June 30, 2023

The Unfolding Medicaid Disaster

Now that Biden and Congress have ended pandemic protections, nearly a million have lost Medicaid coverage for procedural reasons so far — and many more will. From The Lever via Portside.

D.C. cleared scores of homeless from McPherson Square. Then kept evicting them.

“Although D.C. officials deemed more than 60 percent of them eligible for housing assistance, less than 30 percent ultimately received some kind of housing — including accepting a bed in one of the city’s shelters. The majority remained on the street.” As activists predicted at the time, encampment evictions provide no lasting solutions for the District’s houseless – in fact, it makes it harder for advocates to help our houseless neighbors. Read more from the Washington Post.

International labor news: Retail workers across Spain walked off the job on Monday, striking against H&M Group for better pay and working conditions. “Union leader Ángeles Rodríguez Bonillo told The Associated Press that workers had lived with “salaries that have been frozen for many, many years” but now have found their situation untenable “with the economic situation and the high cost of living.”

Strike Ready: Teamsters prez O’Brien says “The largest single-employer strike in American history [against UPS] now appears inevitable.” Company has ‘til today (Friday) to change their offer, he said. From the union’s website. 

Why did Democrats embrace the far-right Narendra Modi? 

From Jacobin: “During an official state visit, the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has been feted and praised despite his Hindu nationalism and right-wing policies — even by Democrats.”

Maryland tidbits from the weekly News You Can Use blog (Progressive Maryland): “As a new United Way study showed over the weekend, there are nearly a million Maryland households that are employed, ‘earn above the [Federal Poverty Level], but not enough to afford the basics in the communities where they live.’” Before COVID that number was over 800,000; COVID times added 77,000. So the numbers were already bad. And that’s households. More current news, detailed in the blog, illuminates how households in Maryland and elsewhere tumble into that status.

On a related note, Rev. William Barber and colleague Gregg Gonsalves identify the stealth killing machine in US life: “A recent study by one of our colleagues shows that cumulative poverty over many years is the fourth leading cause of death in this country. Current poverty – just being poor right now – is seventh on that list.” From The Guardian.