Please don’t start telling me about your arthritis. You’re able to play canasta with the one good hand, so I’m pretty sure you can handle 10 hours of picking oranges as long as we give you a hat.
Trump addresses migrants working on farms amid ICE raids
“We don’t want to do it where we take all of the workers off the farm.”
The Trump administration is cutting $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade while ruthlessly deporting hardworking migrants and decimating America’s agricultural workforce, but don’t worry. Republicans have a sensible plan: Your grandma is going to have to work the fields.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins presented her farm-work-for-Medicaid-coverage plan on July 8, Tuesday, saying:
“There will be no amnesty. The mass deportations continue, but in a strategic way, and we move the workforce toward automation and 100% American participation, which, again, with 34 million people, able-bodied adults on Medicaid, we should be able to do that fairly quickly.”
Staff farms with Medicaid recipients – it’s the Republican way
The Los Angeles Times quoted Ventura County citrus and avocado farmer Helen McGrath responding to Rollins’ idea: “I can confidently say that most farmers in the country either laughed out loud or were just deflated by those comments. It just shows how uninformed and out of touch some of these officials are with what food production looks like in this country.”
Oh yeah, Farmer McGrath. What exactly do you know about “farming” and “forcing people to work on farms in exchange for basic health care”?
Republicans always want to believe ‘able-bodied’ people are on the dole
Some might quibble with Rollins’ whole 34 million “able-bodied adults on Medicaid” bit, largely because it’s fictional.
As of 2023, according to KFF, there were about 26 million working-age adults on Medicaid who weren’t getting Supplemental Security Income or Social Security Disability Insurance. Of those, most are either not working because they’re in school, have a disability or are caregivers. Only 8% are either retired or unable to find work. So that would be about 2 million able-bodied adults on Medicaid.
But what does math know about numbers? I’m going to take Secretary Rollins’ word for it and assume it’s high time meemaw and peepaw got off the Medicaid dole and into the tomato fields.
Since it will undoubtedly be hard for some to let their loved ones know they must transition from a popular government-funded program that provides health insurance to help low-income individuals and families to working long hours in the sweltering heat, harvesting fruits and vegetables, I’ve prepared a form letter. This can be modified to fit the specifics of your soon-to-be-booted-off-Medicaid-so-billionaires-can-get-tax-breaks family member. I’m sure you’ll find it a dignified way to teach them they need to earn their keep.
A letter telling your loved ones they now have to do farm work for Medicaid
Dear Grandma:
I hope this note finds you and everyone at the Sleepy Pines Adult-Living Facility doing well and enjoying the free health insurance my tax dollars are buying you.
Unfortunately, I have to tell you the gig is up. Because the Trump administration has deemed you able-bodied, the health insurance allowing you to live with a modicum of dignity will now be contingent on how well you handle a rake and how many bushels of apples you fill per day.
Please don’t start telling me about your arthritis. You’re able to play canasta with your one good hand, so I’m pretty sure you can handle 10 hours of picking oranges as long as we give you a hat and a wagon for your oxygen tank.
I realize you are technically “retired” and worked and paid taxes all your life, but it’s high time you stopped using chronic kidney disease and blindness as an excuse to get free health insurance. I know if this situation were reversed, you’d be telling me to lift myself up by the bootstraps and get out in the shadeless fields. It’s what Grandpa would have wanted had he not worked in the mines well past his retirement age and died of emphysema, penniless.
There are important people out there, like billionaires Elon Musk and our great President Donald Trump, and they all deserve tax breaks and a chance to be mean to immigrants. If that means sending you, my beloved grandma, to harvest lettuce that those fine men will one day drizzle with expensive balsamic vinegar, then so be it. They need their roughage, and you need to stop sitting around on your fancy broken mobility scooter and start lugging farming equipment and getting your one good hand calloused.
Please be ready to report to the farms on Monday morning.
Love,
INSERT NAME HERE
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
